


Home

by anr



Series: Leaving Hell + Home [2]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-01
Updated: 2011-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:24:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anr/pseuds/anr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's not going without a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Alley

**Author's Note:**

> _The Wish_ (BTVS 3x09), plus random episodes from BTVS and ATS up to their series finale's
> 
> Download the soundtrack [here](http://anr.livejournal.com/470647.html).
> 
>   
> 

She's in trouble.

Trouble that's all her own fault, she knows. Too much with the impulsiveness, the over-confidence, the not checking of the alley first, or making sure it was just the one vam--

His blow catches with the underside of her chin, the force knocking her up and off of her feet and into a pile of garbage bags. She lands awkwardly, the bags cushioning her ass but doing little to stop the back of her head from knocking against the side of the dumpster.

_Move, damnit_ , she thinks, shaking her head, _now! move move move!_ but before she can, he's leaning over her and grabbing her shirt in his fists. Snarling, he lifts her up, above the garbage and above his head.

"Show off," she mutters, kicking out as hard as she can. Her foot connects with his groin and he roars, throwing her across the alley. She yelps as she rolls over the uneven concrete until she's fetched up against the bricks, something sharp and probably tetanusy stabbing into her bicep. She pushes away from the sting and feels her shirt tear free, her hip shouting a protest when something cracks underneath it -- a glass bottle, maybe? _fuck_ \-- as she falls over onto her hands and knees.

_Focus_ , she thinks, looking up, _where's your --_

Her bag.

She can see it, not four feet away, the broken strap lying even closer to her. Without waiting to check whether he's recovered, whether he's coming at her again, she lunges for the strap, trusting on instinct and adrenaline more than anything else, her fingers stretching, _stretching_ \--

There's a sudden rush of movement, and a shout from behind her that she can't quite parse because the only thing it sounds like is the one thing she knows it _can't_ be -- _my name_ , she thinks, _how could_ \-- and then her head is exploding, her vision purpling into an inky, suffocating blackness.

She drowns.

  


* * *

  


Her head. Oh, god, her _head_.

She has a headache. A really, really, _really_ kill-her-now-she-just-wants-to-die _bad_ kinda headache... and is she even properly awake yet?

Keeping her eyes screwed shut, she starts to turn onto her side, wanting simply to bury her head into the pillow beneath her and fade back into oblivion, only to freeze as her arm shouts a protest. She whimpers.

Something hot and moist spreads over her forehead, the heat an instant balm as it presses against her temples. Whimpering again, she tries to focus on the warmth, tries to imagine it melting away the pain, each throb getting a little less big, a little less hurty, a little less...

  


* * *

  


She's better at consciousness the second time around.

Opening her eyes, she blinks in the dim light as her nightmare fades, brain mentally rolling back the last however long and coming up with... pain. Pain and pain and... _the alley!_

Bolting upright, she winces as her body registers a whole host of reasons as to why movement of any speed is probably a bad idea, and then ignores them all in favour of a much more pressing horror -- she has no idea where she is.

At all.

Adrenaline kicks in, scattering her gaze around the room. It's dark in here, a single lamp throwing shadows across the rough brick walls, a bedside table, a wardrobe, chair and bed. The bed coverings feel like cotton and -- she runs a shaky hand over the spread covering her legs -- the tapestry her mother used to have in her sitting room. Out of habit she looks up to see if it matches the curtains and notes the lack thereof with a sinking sensation. No mirrors, either.

"Vampire," she breathes out, fear snapping through her veins. _Five years_ , she thinks. _Five years of close calls, of almosts, of bad dreams and --_

And sitting here isn't going to wake her up any damn sooner. Throwing back the covers, she grimaces when her hand touches something damp tangled in the sheets -- a wet facecloth, she realises, recognising the feel of terry towelling -- as she scrambles out of the bed. She presses her fingers to her throat, searching for wounds, and finds only smooth skin. The lackingness doesn't reassure her much.

Her shoes are sitting beside the bed and she pulls them on, lacing them as quickly as she can. Her bag is next to the lamp on the table, and she snatches it up, surprised to find its contents undisturbed. She's thinking too fast, and not nearly fast enough, as she runs through every conceivable possibility, tying off the broken strap and slinging the bag over her shoulder. From within it, she pulls out her cross and a stake, hefting one in each hand.

"You -- you don't need those."

The voice makes her jump, a startled yelp clawing free as she whirls to face the doorway. She raises both hands. "Stay back!"

"It's okay," says the voice -- male, she notes, and -- "I'm not goi--"

Her stomach does a double back-flip -- _she knows that voice, oh god, she knows that voice, knows it like she knows her own, like she knows her worst nightmares_ \-- and her fear spikes into terror, spearing her chest hard and fast. "... Angel?"

His shadow nods.

_Ohgodohgodohholysunnydalenonono..._

"Back off," she says, whispers. She clears her throat and tries again. "Now."

"I'm --"

" _Now_!" Her voice is a shriek, wire-thin with hysteria, and she takes a deep breath, needing it to calm -- needing her _heartbeat_ to calm. She knows he can hear her pulse racing, and she knows what that sound will do to him. What _he'll_ do...

But despite every nightmare in her mind -- he steps back.

She doesn't relax. Can't. "Keep going," she orders.

It takes everything in her to move after him, to step forward as he retreats, slowly pacing his steps. When she clears the doorway, she can see what looks like a kitchen and lounge area, the furniture threadbare and on the wrong side of thirty years old. She scans quickly and sees stairs leading off to the side. "Exit?" she asks.

He nods again.

They do a slow semi-circle, her hands not lowering for a second. Just because she remembers him attacking before now, just because he doesn't look like he's going to attack at _all_...

"Don't move," she says, backing up to the stairs. Her heel brushes the bottom step.

"I won't," he says quietly. "Cordelia --"

Spinning, she takes the stairs two at a time. There's an abandoned office at the top, blinds drawn, obstacles galore. Side-stepping the dusty shroud-covered furniture, her bag thumps against her hip as she veers towards what looks like an exit. _Pleaseohpleaseoh_...

The door is shut, but the lock is easy enough to flick open for all the seconds it causes her to lose. The outer door has a panic-bar and she slams against it, pushing her way through to what she hopes is outside and --

It is outside.

And it's daylight.

The sun is bright in the street, glinting off parked cars and building windows, but she doesn't stop running until she's two blocks away, her lungs aching for oxygen and her body just aching. Bending over in the middle of the sunshiny footpath, she wraps her arms around her body and tries to keep herself together.

_Angel_ , she thinks.

She throws up.

  


* * *

  


Nobody stops to help her, or ask her if she's okay, and she's not surprised. New Yorker's might have the monopoly on the uncaringness stereotype, but they've nothing on the LA ability to refuse to see anything unshiny or Hollywood glitter-free. She knows this for a fact -- she was the best stereotype there was.

Walking away, she jumps on the first bus she sees, heading to anywhere but here.

She ends up in Lafayette before switching to another line, this time cutting back across to Lincoln Heights. Her third, and last, bus choice is the one that finally heads her back into Silverlake. It takes an age, with the traffic, and she stares out the grimy windows blindly, tracking the sun as best as she can until her gaze is bleary from the glare and she can't think about anything else, not even her heart, pounding in her chest still, too hard and fast and hard and _Angel_...

She closes her eyes.

  


* * *

  


At her apartment, she moves methodically once she's inside, bolting the door and flicking on the coffee machine out of habit. In the bathroom, she turns on the shower and then moves to shed her dirty and torn clothes, the mirror slowly revealing a masterpiece of bruises and scrapes.

The damage is worse than she'd figured, she realises, considering she hadn't had any trouble hailing from each bus stop, but maybe better than she probably deserves.

She's got some pretty horrible gravel rash on her forearms that's no doubt gonna sting like a son of a bitch when she tries to shower them clean, and her thighs, hips, knees and elbows are hella tender and colourific. Her ribs ache when she breathes but -- she presses her fingers down on each one swiftly -- not cracked this time, thank god. The underside of her chin is all but purpley-green from the uppercut that taught her -- temporarily at least -- how to fly, and there's a goose egg the size of Mars on the side of her head.

Unfamiliar white gauze is tacked over her bad arm, halfway down her bicep, and she plucks the bandage away nervously, turning the limb into the light.

Five little stitches track across the thin skin, sealing up a gashy wound that would have definitely scarred without them, and which might still scar even with.

When she realises she's staring at her the scar on her thigh, she forces herself to turn away from her reflection.

  


* * *

  


The hot water sears her skin, pricking at the cuts and scrapes, forcing out a moan.

Self-furious, she slaps at the wet tiles. Once. Twice. Then over and over and over --

When she can breathe again, she turns up the heat.

  


* * *

  


In her bedroom, she pulls on sweats and a tank, twisting her wet hair into a tight plait. She can smell coffee, hot and strong, drifting out of her kitchen and she follows the scent, snagging a bottle of single malt from the top of the fridge as she goes. 

The faux-Irish goes down harsh, liquid fire sinking into her muscles, and she grimaces against the burn.

She checks the locks on her front door again, then the ones on all her windows, eyeing the bars outside for any signs of tampering. Ang-- _nobody_ could have followed her here -- sunlight and the game of bus tag she played will have ensured that much -- but still. Better safe than stormed.

When she's sure she's as secure as she can be for the moment, she crawls onto her bed and drags a crossbow out of her bedside table. Loading it, she places it on the covers next to her. She figures it's been fifteen hours since she was knocked unconscious in the alley -- if she was in a concussion red alert, the ten hours give or take she spent in _that_ bed has probably put paid to it already -- so she should sleep some more, rest up and all.

Her hand moves to touch the stitches in her arm, fingers brushing the neat black lines of thread.

_Five years almost_ , she thinks.

It hasn't even nearly been close to long enough.

  


* * *

  


Sunnydale High.

She's in class, biology, and Buffy is doodling in their shared textbook, tiny little hearts floating around the lines of printed text.

"Okay, class," says Miss Calendar, and she looks up to see the IT teacher pointing to the projected image of a dissected vampire, its chest flayed open and tiny little arrows pointing to the dead lungs, and heart, and -- eww -- intestines. "Who can tell me where his soul is?"

In front of her, Willow and Xander are sitting side by side and whispering quietly, their heads tucked in close. Willow's wearing the dress she wore the Valentine's day she broke up with Xander and she's happy to note that it looked hella better on _her_.

"Anyone?" prompts Miss Calendar. "Buffy?"

She nudges Buffy, "psst -- earth to Miss Freak! She's calling on you."

Buffy ignores her, ignores Miss Calendar, concentrating on her heart drawing skills. There's so many of them now, it's hard to read what's on the page -- all she can make out is bits and pieces: _nici mort, nici al finite_...

Willow looks over her shoulder, her cheek brushing Xander's. "She doesn't know," she says, nodding at Buffy. "She's not here." When she smiles, her fangs gleam in the sunlight streaming through the classroom windows. "Not anymore."

She blinks, surprised, and starts to say, _yes she is, she's right here_ , only when she turns to the side --

Willow sing-songs, "told you so."

She looks up and realises it's not just Buffy who's gone, it's _everyone_ , the classroom empty and silent. Even the dissected vampire picture is gone, the projector dark.

At the blackboard, a piece of chalk floats in the air, an unseen hand scratching out gibberish -- _sufletul_ \-- over and over again, until the board is covered, more white than not.

Scared now, she pushes away from the desk, getting to her feet and backing away.

The chalk stick breaks in half, the pieces dropping to the floor.

_Run!_ she thinks, spinning on her heel, only --

"Anya!"

The girl -- _demon_ \-- blocking her path smiles broadly. " _Happy now_?" she asks, shifting, her arm raising and swinging back around quicker than should be possible, the sword in Anya's hand whistling through the air until the blade is biting deep into her neck, sever--

  


* * *

  


She wakes with a gasp, one hand jerking up to press against her throat while her other fumbles for the crossbow. She hits the trigger and the arrow fires, thudding into the wall across the room. She yelps.

Panting heavily, she stares at the arrow, still vibrating in her wall. Feels the smooth, unbroken flesh of her neck and the race of her pulse beneath the skin. The used crossbow shakes in her hand.

_Well_ , she thinks, _okay then_.

  


* * *

  


When she's breathing slow enough to move, to yank the arrow out of her wall, and leave her bedroom, she realises that for all her run away-itis? She can't pull up stakes this time.

Not yet, anyway.

Not when she's so close, when she's put in way too many musty-book-nights and savate classes to sacrifice it all for --

Her brain shies away from finishing that thought.

It's still daylight, she realises, as she heads into her living room, but a quick glance at the clock on her kitchen wall tells her that, while she was only asleep for a couple of hours, her routine for the day has been shot through the heart and scattered like dust. She's missed her class, her call with her accountant, and reluctant as she is to admit it -- she's too sore to make the trek over to Vermont Square Branch and back. She could try again, maybe, and see if she can't claim a few more hours of sleep, or --

Spying her bag on her dining room table, she digs out her notes from last night.

"Screw him," she says out loud. She's so got better things to do than turn her life upside down because some vampire kicked her ass.

  


* * *

  


She orders in earlier than usual, taking advantage her scheduling fuck up to get take out from the Thai place that refuses to deliver after seven. She hasn't had a good Pad See Yew since... well, since the last time she was injured, actually. Huh.

After dinner she runs a bath, another luxury, steaming up the bathroom with perfumes that take her back to better times, better memories. It's a softer reminder than the ones she usually allows, less with the sucker punching and more with the feather touching, and she lets it linger.

(Her fifth birthday party, and the doll Harmony gave her -- Miss Betsy. The day in grade five when she went back to school after twisting her ankle at ballet practice, and the way Jesse had carried her school bag home for her, even though she'd teased him mercilessly the entire way about how less rich his family was compared to hers. The convertible her father gave her after she got her licence, and that first drive out of the city limits, all fresh air and freedom and her future so bright her sunglasses had needed shades.)

She goes to bed feeling bruised and battered still, yeah, but calmer. Definitely calmer.

Under the covers, she curls up on her side and runs her fingers over her stitches again.

Like the scar on her thigh, she thinks. She wonders.

  


* * *

  


She takes a couple of days, easing through the soreness in her muscles and letting her bruises fade, before getting back with the normalness of her life. Jean-Claude refuses to let her spar initially, but by the end of the weekend she's ass kicking once more, the Library's back to pushing her out the door come closing times, and she's picked out the stitches he gave her.

With the benefit of a little distance, and some serious doses of rationalisation, she's able to reflect back on that night and realise that, like it or not, she owes Angel her life. If it hadn't been for him... well.

But still, life saving aside, it's done. It's happened and it's _over_. They've done their big unexpected reunion thing, and -- big whoop, yeah? In a city of three and a half million bodies, she should only be surprised that it hadn't happened _sooner_ , so the chances of a second lightning strike? Zero, likely. Or better than zero even -- negative point pi whatever.

Demons willing, she'll never, ever see him again.

  


* * *

  


He's following her.

She wasn't sure at first -- all her usual bait and switches had turned out empty and faily -- but with a slight change in her routine, his presence is unmistakable.

There's a nightclub just up ahead, music bleeding into the street with all the subtlety of a heavy metal concert, and instead of passing it by like she normally would, she slips inside the doorway, counting on the pounding of the drums to mask her heartbeat. Her back presses against the graffiti-stained concrete, and she's grateful that her clothing is dark enough tonight to help her blend in with the shadows.

When he walks past the entrance-way a minute later, his footsteps slow enough to suggest that he'd seen her head inside, she holds her breath, but he doesn't stop.

She waits until she's reasonably sure that he's more than a few feet away, then slips out of the shadows and back onto the street.

He freezes instantly, half-turning back towards her, and she wonders where he was going to wait for her. Most of the shopfronts on this street are grated, their steel barriers firmly in place once sunset hits, and the nearest alley is at least half a block away from the club. After following her for three days, he must know that she'd never allow herself to be deliberately cornered so, where? She lets her gaze skitter across a nearby bus stop and wonders, _maybe_...

"So," she says, tone light, "stalking. Third most popular sport among males or what?"

He maintains the quarter-profile pose. "Fourth," he answers, "after Luge."

She rolls her eyes. "Hello, Angel."

He unfreezes, slowly turning to face her, and even though she was watching, waiting for it, she can't help but back up a step. "Hello, Cordelia."

For a long moment they just stand there, staring at each other. She finds herself studying his appearance intently, taking the opportunity she'd run out on at his place last week. The lack of emotion in his voice and face suggests Angel, the broody boy she'd once known in Sunnydale, while the black on black clothing and leather coat reminds her of Angelus. Not much, however, reminds her of the man she'd left sleeping in a hotel room all those years ago. For a start, _that_ guy had been naked.

She really doesn't like to remember that.

"So," she says.

"So," he says.

The door to the nightclub suddenly swings open, spilling loud music and a group of laughing no-one-specials onto the street. The group cuts between them, but she keeps her eyes firmly on Angel. Neither of them moves.

"Would you --" He breaks his gaze then, what looks a hell of a lot like nerves itching at his voice and shoulders. "There's a diner," he says, "on the next block. They're still open. For coffee and, uh, pie. I think? Wou--"

She takes pity on him, not entirely sure what's worse -- the echo of a nightmare that will be sitting within arm's reach of him, or his invitation. "You're buying."

  


* * *

  


The diner is one she's passed more than once on her way back from Dawson's Bookshop, but not one she's ever deigned to patron. The 'all welcome' sign on the door has a lot to do with that; she's never been big with non-exclusivity.

Inside, she slips into the right hand side of the booth, leaving the opposite for Angel. Sitting with her back to the door goes against every learned instinct, but there's no way in hell she's going to have him between her and an exit. Lesser of the two and all.

A waitress heads over as soon as they're seated, and they both order coffees. It's tempting to needle him about the lack of platelets in that type of beverage but, long term view? Not really all that interested in his diet.

"So, are you still all," she raises both fists and rubs them under her eyes real quick, "boo hoo sad clown?"

He looks at her blankly.

She drops her hands. "I'll take that as a yes." She looks around the diner quickly before turning back with the sixty-four thousand dollar question. "Still got your soul?"

His mouth tightens briefly, but otherwise he remains all unemotional. "Yeah. Not really a cure for that," he says, "remember?"

That's the rub, though, isn't it? She alone _does_ remember. The only person now in a hundred years to have met Angelus and then lived to tell the apparently unbelievable tale; if she had a resume, she thinks, that'd be the first line.

The waitress comes back with their order and, when she's gone again, Angel says, quickly, like he's afraid she'll push the whole evil-soul topic, "you look good. Better. I mean --"

She lets him have the win, shrugging. "Not that hard to, considering." She has a fair idea of what she must have looked like to him, all undomestic-violence chic.

"I didn't -- the other day --" He breaks off, clearly self-frustrated, but she doesn't try to save him this time. She waits. "I didn't mean to scare you," he says eventually. "I wasn't going to hurt you."

Sure, he says that _now_. At the time, though -- "And I was supposed to just _know_ that? Waking up in a vampire's lair, broken and battered and Buffy-kicked? I don't know how well you've been keeping up with the modern history of events, Angel, but the last time I was with you I was all PTSD-girl, and you were snacking on me for kicks. Not exactly a healthy-thought endorsement, you know?"

He leans back from the table so suddenly she thinks she can feel the booth shifting. Tensing, she stares at his hands, clenched tight around the formica table edge, and waits for him to telegraph. He stutters, "you -- you said -- you --"

"Me, me, me," she agrees, looking up warily. At the sight of his twistedly horrified expression, however, she rolls her eyes, untensing somewhat. "Oh, _relax_. I'm not completely mental -- we were both with the uber-advantage taking back then." She waves a hand. "I'm just saying -- if five years of bad dreamscaping has taught me anything, it's that dwelling on the realities of reality don't mean much with the muchness, you know? You scared me, all Freddy Kruger popping out of my nightmares, and I freaked. End of story."

He looks confused and, okay, kinda ill, but he says, "I'm sorry," like at least some part of him understands, so.

"Yeah, well, helpful hint for the next time? Don't go caveman-ing women back to your batcave of doom. Us mortals might not need an invitation to enter your home, but the receipt of one works wonders against the not knowing where you're sleeping."

"You were unconscious -- I didn't know -- I couldn't find any ID in your bag to tell me where you lived and --"

She takes a mouthful of coffee, grimacing at the taste and it's complete lack of double half-caf non-fat skinny latte-ness. "Wouldn't have made a difference. Knowing my address? I live alone." When he gives her a strange look, she adds, "people are idiots, okay? Offering invitations to every door knocker that comes by? Safer being a party of one."

He picks up his coffee cup like he's gonna take a sip, but puts it down again undrunk. "I did think about taking you to the ER but --"

She flinches at the _idea_ of that idea -- most of the hospitals these days are nothing more than feeding grounds for the uninviteds; he'd have done just as good dropping her straight off in the morgue.

"-- then you said my name, when I picked you up, so I thought --"

"Wait!" She holds up both hands. "Be kind -- I said _what_ now?"

"My name."

"I so did not."

"Yes, you did."

" _No_ ," she says, as clearly as she can enunciate. "I _didn't_. There are several apodictic facts in this world, Angel, and brain-injury-causing-coma number four notwithstanding, _that_ is one of them."

His mouth opens like he wants to argue it more, but she stares him down until he concedes, making with the muteness again. She nods. _That's better_.

He finally takes a sip of his coffee, not even blinking at the taste of sludge. Bastard.

  


* * *

  


The waitress comes back eventually, offering refills, and she waves her away. Fifteen minutes of cold coffee and silent awkwardness is about her limit of toxic, and she's all for wrapping this up and heading out.

"So," she starts, breaking the impasse, "this was --"

He cuts her off. "I thought you were leaving LA?"

She blinks. "What?"

"Before -- when we were -- you said you were leaving. When I woke up alone that morning, I just assumed --"

Oh, right. Her big 'new life' post-Sunnydale plan. "Yeah," she says, "I did. Leave, I mean. One way ticket straight to the Bahamas, first class. Drank nothing but champagne the entire flight."

"But you came back."

"Yeah, well. Turns out sunlight isn't a turn off for all beasties, you know?" She makes a face. "Decided after the third 'all you can eat human buffet' at the resort that I might survive a little longer on familiar soil after all."

"Demons?"

"Big n' ugly." She frowns. " _Really_ liked their pina colada's though. Go figure."

"So you came back here to fight vampires?"

" _Excuse you_?" Wow -- it's been awhile since her voice has gone that high.

He gestures at the sugar for some reason. "The other night -- I saw you. You were fighting --"

"For my _life_ , you idiot." She looks at him like he's gone mental. "What, you thought I'd just lie back and think of Transylvania?"

"No, but --"

"Look, don't get me wrong. I'm all for there being less vampires in the world, you know? But my interests are entirely one hundred percent self-deserving. Little Miss Exists to Slay I am not."

"I didn't mean to --"

"And don't you ever, okay? I may have to live here for now, but my checkbook won't be balancing just from a staking or ten."

He looks at her curiously. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing," she shakes her head. "Forget it. I'm the girl who lives, okay? No more, no less."

He frowns, features going all pensive and pinchy. "No more or less?" he repeats slowly, staring at her. "No, no, I don't think you are."

Well, he's got her there. "Damn right, I'm not," she agrees. " _I'm_ Cordelia Chase." Turning around, she flags for the waitress. "Check, please!"

  


* * *

  


Outside, she zips up her jacket, digging her hands into the pockets and clutching at the crosses hidden in each one.

"So, thanks," she says carefully, "for the coffee and life saving and all." She backs up a step or five. "But I think we're done now."

He looks up and down the darkened, deserted-like street. "I could walk you home. It's late."

"Yeah, no, got that covered." She pulls out one of the crosses all demonstration-girl like. "'Sides, you and me? Not really with the date moves here."

He nods, expressionless, and watches her back up further.

When she's a good double dozen of paces away, she says, "don't be following me anymore, Angel. I'm not okay with the stalking thing."

"I understand," he says, and, okay, so that's not exactly a blood oath of a promise, but she'll take it. He looks at her and almost, maybe, possibly smiles. Sort of. "Goodbye, Cordelia."

Kinda stunned by his expression, she watches him turn and walk away.

One block. Two. He bleeds into the shadows after the third intersection and that, apparently, is that. She shakes the unreality off.

"Goodbye, Angel," she says.

Spinning on her heel, she heads for the bus stop.

  


* * *

  



	2. The Library

_Ugh_ , she hates this part the most.

Blowing out the match, she grabs a handful of dried mullein and sprinkles it over the smouldering dragon's blood bark. Smoke clouds around her.

Closing her eyes, she breathes in, breathes out --

"Anyanka, I beseech thee." _Please, oh please, oh god, oh_. "In the name of all women scorned -- come before me!"

In the bowl, the leaves and bark crackle softly. One of the candles splutter.

Her nose begins to itch from the smoke.

Slowly, she cracks open one eye. Then the other. Then she turns in a slow circle, staring at the disappointingly demon-empty corners of her living room.

" _Damnit_."

  


* * *

  


She packs away the herbs and candles, and tips the ashes down the drain, rinsing out the bowl. _Another month gone_ , she thinks. That she's failed again bothers her just as much now as it did the first time she tried, four years ago, fresh from the tropics and newly determined to right her wrongs. She's used to succeeding at whatever she tips her french polished nails to, and the fact that she hasn't with this...

Well.

There's a calendar on the wall near her fridge. Grabbing a pen, she crosses out the date, and then counts forward to the next dark moon, circling the box.

"Next time," she promises.

  


* * *

  


The glass is icy cool against her back, the room dark and shadowy. She stretches dreamily, shoulders sliding on the window, her eyes drifting shut.

Fingertips on her calves, the sides of her knees. She sighs. Her legs part.

A small sting, almost like a papercut, on her thigh. She twitches and tries to drop a hand to brush it away, but --

She can't move.

Unease shivers down her spine.

The sting starts to burn, salt in a wound, the glass behind her heating too fast, too hot. She feels feverish suddenly, and she can feel what she thinks is sweat trickling down her legs, dripping off her toes.

She opens her eyes.

Angelus grins up at her, teeth buried in her thigh and her blood gushing over his lips, his chin. When he rips his mouth free, her flesh tears open, glimpses of white bone amongst the shredded tatters of flesh. Blood coats her leg, pooling swiftly under her foot.

"Aww," he drawls, fangs black with blood. He snaps his teeth suggestively. "C'mon. _Just one more_?"

She --

  


* * *

  


\-- screams, bolting upright in her bed. Jerkily, she fumbles back the bedcovers and presses both hands over the scar in her thigh, checking.

Nothing. There's nothing. _Nothing_.

She draws in a shuddery breath and lets it out again.

After a moment, her hands unclench.

Shifting, she turns onto her side and pulls the blankets back up over her again.

She drifts back to sleep.

  


* * *

  


In the morning she goes shopping.

She heads down Rodeo Drive, wandering in and out of the boutiques until she has a new outfit to replace the one she ruined fighting that vampire two week's ago, and then buys a new pair of Jimmy Choo's, just because she can. They're gorgeous.

Lunch is at Sartian's, and Frank is already waiting for her when she arrives.

"Miss Chase," he says, standing.

"Hello, Frank," she says, taking her seat. The table is in the outdoor courtyard, and she shifts her chair so that she's sitting fully in a warm pool of sunlight.

"I see you've been shopping," he says, sitting again. He frowns at the bags beside her chair.

"Naturally." A waiter appears at her side, and she orders a perrier, before continuing with, "I had a little wardrobe situation that absolutely needed correcting."

"Can I assume that you at least kept our last several conversations in mind and _budgeted_ for this correction?"

She waves absently. "Assume away."

"Miss Chase..." he says warningly.

"Frank..." she mimics.

"Miss Chase, as I have told you repeatedly -- your trust fund is _finite_. And with the economy in its current state, well. You simply cannot affo--"

She cuts him off. " _Stop_." The water returns with her drink, and she takes a sip. Setting the glass on the table, she fixes Frank with a cool look. "I don't pay you to lecturise, and you well know it. My spendings are my spendings and _as_ they're my spendings, they're both non-negotiable and not about to change. What I _do_ pay you for, is to keep my money well invested. So." She leans back in her seat and brushes her hair off her shoulder. "Talk."

He opens his mouth.

"Ah!" She holds up a finger. " _Investments_ , Frank."

He grimaces.

  


* * *

  


While she eats, she listens to his monthly update. He recommends a few changes to her portfolio, and she agrees to all but one of the amendments he suggests, signing the papers he's brought with him.

Capping his pen, he files the papers back into his briefcase. "If you don't mind me saying, Miss Chase, I am relieved to see you well. When you missed our last fortnightly call --"

She waves away his concern. "I was otherwise engaged." _With not dying_. "Shouldn't happen again."

"Very good," he says, gesturing to the waiter for the check. She lets him sign for their meal, knowing he'll write it off as a business expense. "Shall I ask the maitre d' to call you a cab service?"

Standing, she shakes her head. "No, thanks. I still have another shop to visit before I finish for the day."

His mouth tightens, but he doesn't try with the inappropriate scolding again, and maybe that's why she pauses.

"Frank." She licks her lips. "Bottom line?"

He doesn't ask her to clarify, just folds his little accountant hands together and sighs. "Without any form of income? And no adjustments to your expenditures? Eighteen months."

"Eighteen months," she repeats.

"Less, if the economy worsens."

 _Less_ , she echoes. _Then..._

Her mind balks at the word 'bankrupt'.

With a bright, bright smile, she picks up her shopping bags. "Well, then," she says, cheerily. "I guess I better get busy."

  


* * *

  


"Angel?"

_Damnit, where is he?_

"Angel?"

Kitchen? No. Lounge? No. Creepy looking hole in the floor that smells like the sewer? Oh thank god no.

Upstairs, something shatters. She ducks instinctively. " _Angel!_ "

There's a thudding sound, too close to be above her, and she whirls around to see Angel on the opposite side of the room, standing at the doorway leading into his bedroom. "Cordelia?" he asks, bewildered. "What --"

She points to the stairs. "Demon!"

"Huh?"

What, he needs an engraved freakin' invitation now to save her? "Upstairs! Demon! Kill!" It roars loud enough for her to feel the echo in her bones and she cringes. " _Go!_ "

He goes.

  


* * *

  


While he's off superheroing it up, she searches for another exit, hoping for something other than the sewer hole. She's not all that successful.

"He'd better win," she mutters. Her Jordache's will never forgive her if she has to head down there.

There's a massively booming thud-crunch upstairs, and she looks up nervously as plaster dust drifts from the ceiling.

"Please," she whispers.

The boom echoes and fades.

She steps closer to the hole.

Then, footsteps. On the stairs. _Person_ -sized sounding footsteps, more to the point.

She sags.

  


* * *

  


By the time he's downstairs proper again, she's in his kitchen, staring at the contents of his fridge. And lack thereof. "You know you've only got blood in here?" she calls out.

"Vampire," he answers simply.

He sounds close. "Demon?" she asks, looking over her shoulder.

He hefts what was probably once a very shiny hatchety thing before laying it down on the table. "Decapitated."

"Eww -- unsanitary much?" Green goo splatters cover the blade; shuddering, she turns back to the fridge before she can see if any'll drip down onto the table. "Seriously, though -- not even a non-fat yoghurt?"

"I don't get a lot of visitors."

"Obviously." Slamming the door shut, she turns around, blinking as she catches sight of his chest. "You're hurt."

He glances down at the oozing gash above his heart, and shrugs. "I'll heal." He looks up again. "My office, on the other hand..."

"Yeah, what's up with that anyway?" She leans against his counter and crosses her arms. "Are you Clark Kent now? Office-boy by day, Fanged Crusader by night?" She smirks as an image of Angel wearing tights and a cape pops into her mind.

"What? No -- it came with the apartment." He frowns. "Why --"

"Was there a three-hundred pound demon sumo-wrestling with your desk chair?" She shrugs. "Followed me here." And how glad is she feeling right now that she'd recognised the bus stop near the alley as being the one she'd escaped to two weeks ago? If she hadn't been around the corner from Angel's...

"And you're here because...?"

"Duh. _There was a three-hundred pound demon following me_."

He sounds exasperated. " _Why_?"

She waves a hand dismissively. "Oh, that's not really importa--"

"Cordelia." And now he looks it too. Damn.

She sighs. "Look, it was just a case of mistaken identity is all. I thought he was a vampire, he thought I was dinner... could've happened to anyone on their way back from shopping." _Shopping! Oh, crap -- her clothes... her Jimmy Choo's..._

She offers up a quick mourning prayer for her lost purchases.

"But if you thought --"

"It was dark-ish! And he was all skulky in the twilight shadows! If it hadn't been for his skin being, like, armoured tank-strong, my stake totally would've done the trick." _So_ would've, she thinks. Her lunge had been target-straight.

Angel blinks. "You -- attacked him?"

"Hey, I operate strictly on a 'stake first, question the dust later' policy. Mostly." She shakes her head. "Anyway, the main thing is -- go you! You kill demons good!" She gives him a big thumbs up.

He sighs. "Cordelia --"

She cuts him off. "You know, you should really go take care of that --" she wags a finger at his wound, "-- there before it, like, scars and bleeds all over the floor. I mean, _really_ , Angel. Eww."

He stares at her for such a long moment that she almost turns around to see if there's something other than his kitchen counter behind her.

She raises an eyebrow. "What?"

  


* * *

  


She doesn't run away once he disappears into his bedroom or bathroom or wherever -- that would probably seem rude and all -- but she does go. Away. Briskly.

Sure, she _could_ have stayed -- she's fairly certain any attacking jones would have been exhausted on the demon -- but to what end? She has so definitely better things to do than help him clean up demon goo (and, hello -- his place, his mess), and while Angel might be turning out to be not this reality's _worst_ conversationalist (clearly Buffy was a bad influence on him back home, making him all taciturn and what), spending time with Angel? Not something to be making a habit out of. Ever.

Still, she thinks, unlocking her front door and heading inside. He did do her a real fighty solid, killing the demon and all. And he could conceivably think that she might owe him for the broken furniture. And because of the whole 'he got wounded' thing.

And that would be bad, she knows. The owing? Debts unpaid and all. Plus the coronary Frank'd have if she started outfitting some random office. So --

She smiles. _So_ , she'll send him a fruit basket.

That'll end things nicely.

  


* * *

  


Only the trouble with ending things? Not so much with the word meaning what it should in this reality.

She knows he's not following her still -- she's the one who's broken her own routine and regular locations again, making with the additional shopping instead of her usual librarying -- but that doesn't really make her feel any better. At least if he was all fourth-favourite-sport-guy she'd be at one with the blame-him-entirely game; it's a different ballpark altogether when the universe is simply screwing with her. (And, hello! How many years has she lived in LA? And lived here and _never_ come across him before? It just doesn't make any reasonable kind of reasonable sense for that to be so unreasonably screwy _now_.)

Standing near the entrance to the alley, she watches him fight three vampires. His moves are different from hers -- more with the force and strength of the offensively-minded and less with the defensiveness of her savate blocks -- and she can't help but admire his speed and grace. When he's not attacking her, he's beautiful.

Angel throws one of the vampires close to where she's watching, and the vampire grins when he sees her. Jumping up, he makes towards her.

"Uh uh," she says, holding out a cross. "Not me." She points back to where Angel is tussling with the other two. " _Him_."

With a snarl, the vampire retreats. She watches him lunge back into the fight.

She leaves after the second vampire dusts, not wanting to be there when Angel finishes entirely and can focus on any surroundings that would include her.

As she buses back to her place, she wonders absently if he enjoyed the fruit.

  


* * *

  


She replaces the clothes and shoes and books she lost fleeing from Sir Demon-made-of-bricks, and goes back to her usual patterns of studying and sparring and surviving in her brave new world. She's still oh-for-nothing on finding an exploitable loophole in her wish, but Jean Claude seems relatively pleased with her kicks of late, so.

Though she keeps an eye out, she doesn't run across Angel -- or, even better, need to seek _him_ out -- and after a couple of weeks she stops expecting to see his shadow around the next corner, the next alley. She relaxes.

Which is, of course, the universe's cue to throw him right back at her.

"Should've known this couldn't last," she says, dropping her book on the table.

His head jerks up from the text he was reading, surprised. "Cordelia?"

"Bingo." Across the floor, the librarian gives her a cautionary look, and she waves a brief apology. Turning back to Angel, she lowers her voice. "What are you doing here?"

He looks back down at his book, then up at her, as if he can't quite remember.

"Angel?" she prompts.

He blinks. "I'm looking for a raising ritual -- there's a Thesulac demon that -- I had a copy once, but not for a long time."

"I meant what are you doing _here_. In this library." _Also known as, the-one-you-know-very-well-I-visit-almost-every-day, thank you very much._ "At four o'clock in the _very sunny afternoon_."

He looks around briefly, like he's checking that the sun hasn't suddenly breached this windowless reading room. "I came in through the sewers in the basement."

She wrinkles her nose. "Eww."

She waits for him to say something, or -- better yet -- to grab his book and get up and _leave_ now that he can see that she's here, and when he doesn't, when he just sits there and looks back down at his book and turns a page, she realises... he's not going to.

She wavers for another moment -- go or stay? stay or go? -- and then sighs. This is her library time, damnit, and if she starts running every time the universe pulls another fast one, her eighteen months will be over way too soon. Way, _way_ too soon. Pulling out the chair opposite him, she takes a seat.

"So," she says, flicking open her book. "Thesaurus demon, huh?"

"Thesulac," he says, not looking up. "Paranoia demon. Feeds on its victims innate insecurities."

"And you want to raise it to, what? Sit up and beg? Say hi?"

"I need it corporeal."

"So -- it's a ghost right now? Why not just exorcise its ass? I know a great cleansing ritual -- worked wonders on my apartment when I first moved in." Angel does look up at that. "What? Like I'm seriously gonna room with a couple of ghosts? Joel Haley Osmont I am not. Though," she thinks back on those early days here in LA, "I could've lived without the bile. Took forever to get that smell out of the curtains."

Angel stares at her long enough for her to wonder if she forgot to say that all in English. Eventually, he says, "Thesulac's can only be killed when they're in a physical form."

Shrugging, she turns to the index page in her book and begins skimming. "Your loss."

  


* * *

  


As she walks back into the library the next night, she figures there's a decent chance she'll see him again. They'd both stayed til closing yesterday and, judging by the annoyed expression on his face when he'd walked away after, he hadn't found his eureka anymore than she had.

The reading room is empty when she walks in, so she settles down with a copy of the _Liber Juratus_ and gets with her searching. She's read it before -- the grimoire was one of the first texts she tried -- but something she saw in the _Codex Justinianus_ translation she was reading last night has twigged at her recollections and she wants to double-check her thoughts.

Angel walks in while she's reading up on her spirits of the north, and she waits until he's sitting opposite her before saying, "cash, credit or cheque?"

"Huh?"

Digging into her bag, she pulls out a book of her own and slides it across the table to him. "Page two-ninety. You owe me."

He picks it up and flicks through it quickly. "How did you --"

She shrugs. "I checked my bookcases when I got back to my place last night. Couldn't shake the feeling after we left that I'd read something about demons a la paranoia before." She nods at the book. "You know you're gonna need an orb of Ramen for that to work, right?"

"Ramjarin," he says, still flicking. "And, yes. I've got one already. I remembered that much from before." He looks up and smiles at her. "Thank you."

She shrugs. "No big."

"I mean it," he says. " _Thanks_."

She looks back down at her book, suddenly uncomfortable with his smiling and praising and sincerity. "It's just a book, Angel," she says tersely. "It's not like I fixed the world or anything."

He doesn't get the hint. "For one small part of it, you have."

Snapping her book shut, she stands up quickly, almost knocking over her chair. "Not," she says firmly, "the part that matters."

She walks away.

  


* * *

  


By the time she's found a mental grip -- and a copy of _Satan's Rhetoric_ \-- and returned to the reading room, Angel's gone.

"Good," she says, out loud and like she means it.

From the other room, the librarian shushes her.

  


* * *

  


She walks back to her place the long way, eschewing the bus in favour of some exercise, but the only vampire she comes across is...

"Angel."

Stopping in front of her on the sidewalk, he holds out her book. "I just wanted to return this."

She takes it from him, sliding it into her bag. Her fingers brush a vial of holy water as she does and she's a little surprised by her total and absolute reluctance to bring it out and see how fast he can run -- seriously, is she not even feeling a little cautious around him? At all? "I take it the raising went well?"

He nods. "I taught it how to play dead."

 _Cute_. She pulls her hand free of her bag and hitches the strap higher on her shoulder, eyeing him quickly. He doesn't _look_ like he's been off fighting the forces of evil, so it must have been quick and muss free. "Go team you then."

He smiles. Again. And that's -- also cute.

But in a bad way, she tells herself. A very bad way. A very, _very_ \--

He gestures down the street. "Do you want to grab a coffee? My treat."

"Sure."

\-- wait, _what?_

  


* * *

  


They go to the same diner as before, and she chooses the sludge again, hoping it may have improved. It hasn't.

"So," she says, fiddling with a paper napkin. "LA still, huh? Couldn't think of anywhere else to go after?"

"After?" he repeats, confused.

She waves a hand towards the window, like Sunnydale and the Plaza are right outside, side by side across the street, and he must understand sign language because his expression clears.

"Oh, you mean --"

"Yeah."

He shrugs. "It's a place."

She makes a face. "Wow, with descriptions like that I'm surprised Frommer's don't have you on retainer." She leans back in the booth and studies him thoughtfully. "Let me guess -- after a couple of days, when you realised I wasn't coming back, you hightailed it out of the hotel and found the darkest, deepest hole you could crawl into. Yada yada yada, you spent the next however long brooding broody thoughts until, one day, wham! You realised, 'hey -- I have, like, _forever_ to be boring -- maybe I should get with the getting for awhile!' and got over yourself." She takes in his startled expression, and nods satisfactorily. "Figured as much."

"You --" he stops and shakes his head. "I've never met anyone like you."

"Duh." She could have told him that; no-one in this reality has.

He looks down at the table top. Hesitantly, he says, "I did... think... about going back to Sunnydale."

A shudder runs through her, tensing her faster than a glimpse of fang. "To kill the Master?" It's an assumption, but not one that surprises her much. The Master killed Buffy, after all, and Angel and Buffy? Definitely one with the love-means-death Shakespearing.

He nods.

"But you didn't."

He shakes his head, still with the looking down, and she realises, suddenly, that he's... ashamed?

"He's dead," she says, and nods when he raises his eyes to hers. "Eaten by some kind of a snake demon. The details I got are pretty sketchy but apparently there was this whole ouroboros of big bads on the Hellmouth for awhile. The snake got your father-in-law, some demon hybrid -- the skinny was uber-unclear as to what sort of actual beastie _he_ was -- got the snake, and then a hell god decided to reign supreme." She ticks them off on her fingers. "A slayer got the god, in the end, but I don't think she survived the battle either."

"A slayer --"

"Oh, don't worry. It wasn't anyone we -- _I_ knew. Some girl called Mona? Rona?" She shrugs. "I don't remember exactly."

Angel looks completely dumbfounded; she thinks she preferred the smiling. "Where --? How --?"

"An old classmate," she says. "He stupidly decided to stay in town and help the hopeless. We got with the chatting on Friendster a couple of times last year."

"He sounds very brave," says Angel, but slowly, like he's still processing.

"No," she says distinctly. "He sounds very dead." She picks up her napkin again and tears it in half, dropping the pieces onto the tabletop. "His obit appeared two weeks after his last 'hey'."

Angel blinks. "I'm sorry," he says.

She shrugs, and pushes all thoughts of Larry and those last tenuous links to her old social life back out of her mind. "Don't be. He was dead jock walking the moment he decided not to pack his bags and survive."

  


* * *

  



	3. The Diner

Against all the bajillion reasons not to, coffee with Angel actually starts to become sort of a... thing.

What _kind_ of a thing, she's not all that inclined to try too hard with the figuring of it out. All she knows is that if she decides to walk back to her place from the library instead of jumping on the thirty-three bus, there's a better than not chance she'll bump into him somewhere near the diner.

Well, him and any number of his non-friends.

"You know," she says, blocking a punch that was telegraphed way too early. "This is starting to seem a lot like an awful habit."

Angel grunts.

"I mean," she ducks, "one unexpected fight is unexpected. And two? Still within the realm. But _four_? In the last _week_?" The vampire grabs at her throat and tears off her necklace. His snarl as the cross pendant sears his fingers almost makes the sting from the chain snapping worth it. "We should probably look into a twelve step programme or something."

Angel sweeps the legs out from under the vampire he's fighting, and stakes her before she can get up again. He looks over to where she's slowly backing away from hers. "They have those for demons now?" he asks, moving up behind the vampire.

"It's possible," she says. "I'll call Betty Ford tomorrow. See if they have an outreach or something for wannabe-bad's." She breaks from her blocking moves and plunges the pointy end of her stake into the vampire's chest before Angel can steal her dust.

Bending over, hands on her thighs, she coughs away her reward.

"You know," he says, "you didn't have to help. I could've handl--"

"Oh, no," she says, straightening up. "Don't you be ruining my savouring here -- it's not often I get to rescue the damsel in distress."

"Well, that-- hey!"

Clapping her hands to get rid of any residual dust, she heads out of the alley. "So what's with all the one true pairing vamps these days anyway? Has there been another Romeo and Juliet remake that I'm not aware of?"

He falls into step beside her as they resume their path towards the diner. "Hunting in groups isn't uncommon. Back when I --" He coughs. "I mean, it's done. And has been done. A lot."

She rolls her eyes. "Nice cover, Mr Smooth," she says. "How is Darla these days? Still ashes to ashes?"

"What?" He sounds startled. "No -- or, I don't think so. The last time I saw her, she was leaving Sunnydale to go shopping with Drusilla."

And hello alternate history fun fact number six-hundred-and-five; like she didn't already have enough reminders of what she did. "How nice for them both," she mutters.

He gives her a strange look. "You know them?"

"Darla? No, thank god. She was out of the picture well before my Scoobie days. And I wouldn't ever claim Drusilla as a BFF what with her being psychotically _insane_ and all."

Up ahead, a bus approaches the nearest intersection. It's not her usual line but suddenly she's thinking that if this is going to be a roll-call-of-Angelus'-favourite-people kind of night? Well, she's pretty sure she'd prefer any other storm in the port.

"Cordelia?"

She looks over to where Angel has stopped in front of the diner and is holding the door open for her, all Mr Chivalry-like.

"Yeah," she says, adjusting her bag strap, deciding.

The bus slows to a stop.

She heads into the diner.

  


* * *

  


"How many?"

She shrugs. "Not many."

" _How_ many?"

"What are you, a broken record?" Grabbing the sugar, she pours a heaping into her coffee. "Let it go already."

"Just tell me," Angel says, taking the sugar when she passes it to him.

"Why?"

"Because I want to know."

She raises an eyebrow. "And that's a reason I should care about _why_?"

Leaning back in the booth, he sighs all frustratedly. "It's been bugging me, okay? So just --" He waves a hand. "Put me out of my misery. Please."

Grinning, she pulls her stake back out of her bag as quick as a quick thing. "Oh, well, _that_ I can do."

He makes a face. "Funny."

"I thought so." Tucking the stake away, she tastes her coffee. "More than a breadbox," she says finally.

"Huh?"

She looks at him pointedly. "My answer, dorkus -- more than a breadbox."

He scoffs. "That's not an answer."

"So is."

"Cordelia --"

"Angel," she mimics.

Looking away, he stares at the window, jaw clenched. Patient, she sits and waits him out, sipping at her coffee. Eventually, he turns back to her.

"I'll tell you mine," he offers.

Her laughter startles him -- startles _her_ , truth be told -- but a split second later he's grinning right back at her, all bright and beautiful and happy, and.

And not at all like Angelus, she realises, surprised.

"You should do that more often," she says softly, not pre-thinking her words too much.

"Make you laugh?"

She shakes her head. "Smile."

  


* * *

  


Even though she knows Angel knows where she lives -- his initial little stalking party put paid to that level of mystery -- he's been good at keeping his distance ever since.

Which is why she's more than a little startled to realise that their conversation since leaving the diner has covered the entire way back to her place.

"This is me," she says unnecessarily, stopping at her front door.

He nods, looking around the little alcove they're standing in. "It's nice."

"Sunny too," she says, "in the daytime."

He nods. "I can see how that would be helpful," he says dryly.

Pulling out her keys, she unlocks and opens the door, but doesn't step inside just yet. Shifting, she deliberately looks him in the eye. "I'm not going to invite you in, Angel."

He doesn't look surprised to hear it, and his, "I know," is markedly calm and understanding-like.

She's honestly surprised by how bad that makes _her_ feel.

Dismissing the feeling, she steps across the threshold and turns back to face him. "Well," she says perfunctorily.

He smiles at her.

It's not the same big grin he gave her in the diner, and it's not at _all_ like that weird little half-happy look he gave her after their first ever coffee catch-up, but the expression does something crazily scary to her nonetheless.

Existing one-hundred-percent in the moment, she lets her brain disengage as she leans forward and snags the lapel of his coat and tugs, pressing her mouth to his.

He tenses, just briefly, his mouth still against hers, and then --

Oh.

He can't touch her, not properly, not with the majority of her body all safely inside her apartment, but his hands move to her face, fingertips light on her cheeks, like he'd be threading his fingers through her hair if only he could push that far forward. His mouth moves with hers, slowly, softly.

 _Come in_ , she thinks fatalistically, _come in comeincomeincomein_...

Heart pounding way too hard and fast, she breaks the kiss, her breathing rapid against his lips. She closes her eyes. "One-hundred and thirty-eight," she says.

He doesn't seem to have heard her at first. Then, all dazed and confused, "huh?"

She pulls back slowly, feeling his fingers stroke along her jawline as the barrier keeps him in place. She smiles and opens her eyes. "One-hundred and thirty-eight vampires. I keep track."

He shakes his head a little, staring at her. "You're amazing," he says quietly.

He says it like she could _believe_ it, and for that alone...

Biting down on the i-word with difficulty, she steps back and takes a hold of her door. "Night," she says, softly.

He steps back as well, his tone just as soft. "Goodnight, Cordelia."

As she shuts the door, and bolts it, listening to his footsteps fade away into the night, she realises he's right. For the first time in what feels like _forever_ \--

It is.

  


* * *

  


She's smiling as she wanders through her apartment, checking all the locks and dropping her bag onto her dining room table.

And she's still smiling as she brushes her teeth, and twists her hair into a knot at the back of her neck, and then heads into her bedroom. Pulling back the bedcovers, she reaches for her pillow and --

_Aww, c'mon. Just one --_

"More," she whispers.

She freaks.

  


* * *

  


By the time the cab she's called for can arrive and deliver her to Angel's, her panic-attack is approaching the epically bad standards previously only reached the first time they started to have sex.

Almost falling off the last step in his stairs, she screams his name.

He's in front of her before she blink, what looks like worry and concern creasing his features, and she slams her fist into his expression with a satisfying crunch.

He stumbles back a couple of steps, eyes wide and shocked, and she takes advantage, kicking out with a roundhouse that pushes him back again.

"Cor --"

Her low kick sweeps towards his shin-bone, and he jumps it, his instincts snapping to the forefront. Her next roundhouse is brushed aside by the palm of his hand, and she snarls at him wordlessly, trying it again.

"What the hell is _wrong_ with you?" He blocks another kick, this time shoving back on her leg so that she falls, landing on her ass. Pushing herself up, she tries again, relentless. "Damnit, Cordelia. Stop it!"

"Change!"

"What?" He sounds honestly baffled, and that just pisses her off even more. He deflects an uppercut to his chin.

" _Change_!" She feigns a right jab in favour of a left, but he sees it coming and blocks the force. When she tries to spin out another roundhouse, he grabs her foot again and pushes back on it. She drops to the ground hard, breath escaping in a rush. As she struggles in that second of disorientation to breathe again, she looks up in time to see Angel wince, and reach out a hand to help her up.

Twisting, she slams her leg into the side of his, yanking her foot back at the last moment so that her toes catch the back of his knee. As that leg crumples, she plants her other foot into his chest and shoves. He topples over onto his back and she scrambles after him fast, straddling his waist and holding a stake to his heart.

He freezes.

"Vamp out," she orders, panting.

His eyes widen. "Wh--"

She presses down on the stake. "Now."

He does.

Trembling, she watches the bones in his face shift, furrows deepening on his forehead. His eyes flash, gold leeching away the brown. His lips are mostly closed, just a hint of white teeth visible, and she leans in and down slightly, feeling the stake shift.

"Smile," she says.

"No." He's like solid marble underneath her, still and cool. "I'm scaring you."

Her laugh is brief and bitter. "Oh, _please_. Like you have any idea as to what scares me. Smile."

"No."

She pushes down on the stake and feels the tiniest change in pressure as the wood pierces the first layers of skin. He doesn't even flinch. " _Smile_ ," she hisses.

"Cordelia," he says softly. "You'll have to stake me first."

"If I have to," she threatens. "And don't think that I won't not because I _will_ , damnit. I'll do it. I'll stake you."

Without even a trace of a smile he says, calmly, "I believe you."

Whatever fragile control she'd been grasping snaps in her uber-emotional fingers. Letting go of the stake, she lashes out with her fists again, this time pummelling on his chest. "Then do it! Smile! Show me again! Show me! Show me! Show me!"

_Show me Angelus. Show me my nightmares. Show me what I did and what I can only hope of fixing. Show me death and pain and suffering and all the other things I caused. Show me Angelus and show me our body counts and I'll bet you anything mine is higher because I did this, I did this, I did this, I wished for this and it's mine so SHOW ME!_

She beats on his chest, his shoulders, his face, until the demon in him recedes and his human features blur into the early hues of bruised-chic, and --

She freezes mid-punch, seeing him clearly for the first time since he left her front door.

"Why?" she whispers brokenly. _Oh, god, why didn't you_ stop _me? We were right there, grass and fangs and grave-bound, and you had me, you had me, you_ had _me and you could have -- you_ should _have --_

He smiles then, mouth bloody and swollen from her rage, the expression terrible and devastating and still ruinously beautiful. "Why not?"

  


* * *

  


In the silence following her freak out, her panic fades back to her usual levels of post traumatic. She's kinda numb and drained in the absence of her anger, all tanks running on empty, but it's not a totally unfamiliar feeling so she's able to go with it, to deal, to sit on the bottom step of Angel's stairs and stare at a wicked looking sword mounted on a nearby wall.

It's all shiny and pretty and deadly and she'd love to pick it up and give it a swing, just to see how that'd feel.

"We are so absolutely and totally, conceivably _bad_ for each other," she says eventually.

Angel, sitting on the floor and leaning against the sword wall, arms draped loosely around his bent knees, doesn't say anything.

"Epic badness," she says, like he tried to disagree. "No-more-credit-on-the-platinum stratosphere levels of negative, even."

Still with the no response.

Sighing, she pushes herself up, movements a little to jerky at first with her limbs all baby-Bambi awkward, and walks around into his kitchen. "I mean, look at me -- all survivor-girl, functioning and proper, right up until I place my hand in yours and take the Dorothy express back to the land of Oz. And you --" She shakes her head. "You! There's just not enough psychiatry in the world to explain _your_ levels of screwed up."

She opens his fridge and stares inside blindly, ostensibly looking for a bag of blood -- she figures the absolute least she can do is grab him a platelet replacement, seeing as how she beat his out of him -- but she can't see one and so she closes the door again, walking back out.

She's heading towards the stairs again, not entirely sure if she's reclaim her seat or continue walking up and out, when Angel speaks.

"Doyle."

Blinking, she pauses a few feet away from him. "Huh?"

"After you left me -- the first time, I mean -- this guy, demon, named Doyle found me. Told me I had a purpose still, that there were people here in LA that needed my help."

Somehow she doubts this story, random topic change that it is, will end with hugs and puppies. "What happened?"

Angel shrugs. "I sent him away. After Whistler --"

"Who now?"

"Whistler. He was there the first time I saw Buffy, took me to see her called and told me she'd need help. My help. That if I went to the Hellmouth, she'd be there." Angel leans back until his head is against the wall. "She wasn't."

Though she knows he didn't mean it as such, a sharp stab of guilty blame-pain bites into her conscience at the reference to Buffy's persona non gratis-ness in Sunnydale. She ignores it. "You one-name guys really do like to flock, don't you?"

He either doesn't hear her, or doesn't care to. "I didn't want to fail again, so I told this Doyle to get lost, and then I did the same, just so there'd be no confusion."

She waits for a moment, and when he doesn't continue, she prompts, "and?"

He shrugs again. "And nothing. I never heard from him again."

Well, she was right about the lack of a happily-ever-after, but. " _And_? You can't just start a sequitur and not _take_ it anywhere, Angel. That's just mean."

Tilting his gaze back to hers, he says, "I don't think you're bad for me."

A shivery shudder runs up and down her spine at his words. Her mouth goes dry. Her heartbeat trips into a double-time two-step. Grimacing, she says, "the Picasso on your face begs a strong difference."

"It's wrong."

"Angel --"

"Cordy," he says, super patient and calm, like what he's saying isn't a massively huge deal at all. "After Doyle, after _you_ , I hid for a long time. A _long_ time. Right up until I walked into that alley, in fact, and found you, five years on, still alive, still strong, and then it could have been five _minutes_ for all I knew, because the moment I picked you up, I _cared_."

He is not saying what he's saying. She knows he's not. He can't be. "No."

He says, simply, "you're good for me."

A pulse of happiness, unwanted but no less with the potency because of that, warms her for a split second before reality can kick it to the curb. "Then you're even more fucked than I first thought," she says, coldly, "because I am good for no one, least of all Angelus."

He startles. "Angelus!" Standing quickly, he backs up against the wall like she's accused him of wearing plaid or tassels or something equally shocking. "I haven't been him for over a hundred years!"

She stays where she is, watching him move. "Not by my counting."

He shakes his head. "Well, your counting is _wrong_."

 _He doesn't believe_ , she remembers then, but unlike the first time she realised that -- all those years ago, in that hotel room that smelled of sex and them and _sex_ \-- the knowledge no longer shocks her.

Draining again, she heads back to the stairs and sits down. "You want to know why you don't really care, Angel? How I know you're wrong?"

He watches her warily. "How?"

"Because."

"Because?" he repeats, disbelievingly.

"Yep." She waves a hand, gesturing at the space between them. "Because you and me? We're like you and Buffy times a thousand. All misplaced hero worship and sexual tension. And that makes for interesting times, sure, but it's not real, and it's not healthy, and it's certainly not the foundations of the Spelling mansion. You're the ex of my ex's dream girl, and I'm the woman who wished for bluer Tiffany boxes, and you can get blood stains out of leather, I've found, but not if you expect to wear it again."

When he walks over and sits on step next to her, she turns to face him better, knowing she's right.

"We can maybe social-see each other, you and I. Hang out even. You're not horrible to look at, or be around, and when you're not all stuttery with word-indecision your conversationalisms are decent enough. But that's it, Angel. That's likely gotta be the all. Because anything else is just begging for a nightmare after dawn and I don't know about you, but I don't think I can keep freaking out every time we get close and personal just because my brain's wired itself to consider your bite as being synonymous with Xander and Willow's." She quirks a sad smile. "It's too exhausting."

Angel vamps out.

It's unexpected and she blinks in surprise, but somehow, somewhy, even with him so close, his hip just inches from her own on the step, his hands within grabbing distance, his mouth, his _teeth_ , so near, and her heart starting to race, to pound --

But she's not scared, she realises. Not even close. Adrenaline, yes. Some uncomfortableness, sure -- 'cause bumpies? not really high on the attractiveness scale -- but actual fear?

Her nightmare-Angelus is more horrifying than any echoes he can give her.

"I can't not love you just because you say I can't," he says.

 _What did he just --_ No, she thinks, not important. "Smile," she says, quietly.

He does, instantly, lips sliding back and revealing wicked sharp fangs.

She takes one breath, two, slow and even, all the ways this -- _they_ \-- could possibly play out slipping through her mind like lightning, white-hot and quick-fast, nightmare after nightmare after dream, and --

"Screw it," she mutters.

Leaning in, she presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

She's already killed this world and been attempted-killed by it in return... has spent the last four years devoted to fixing it all back again... surely a little personal happy isn't too much to ask for, now.

After all, what's the worst that could happen?

  


* * *

  


"Want to hit me?"

She half-smiles. "Constantly."

They've moved off the stairs and onto his sofa and, okay, it's only a marginal softness improvement over the concrete, but some is better than none, and the touch of his hand is distracting enough for it not to matter anyway.

He threads his fingers through hers. "But you're not going to."

"Confident much? Keep talking, boyo."

"If you were, it would have happened, oh, at least an hour ago."

She raises an eyebrow, pushing her palm flat against his. "You think you know me so well, huh? Think I'm all predictable and figurable out?"

He shrugs. "Maybe."

Tempting as it is to pull her hand free, to swing her legs off of his lap and push herself up from the sofa, she has a feeling that would be the exact opposite of proving him wrong. Reaching out, she snags the collar of his shirt with her free hand instead and pulls until he's leaning towards her and close enough to kiss.

His mouth touches her, softly, then pressing in, his lips teasing hers apart. His tongue slides against hers, licking into the wet warmth of her mouth. She moves her hand from his collar to the back of his neck, anchoring him to where he is. The kiss gets hotter, firmer, and his fingers tighten around hers almost enough to hurt so she grips back just as hard.

The trick to not freaking out, she realises now, is simply to never leave.

Angel pulls back after awhile, untwisting from his lean. As her legs resettle over his lap, she can feel him hard against her outside of her thigh.

His hand holds hers.

"I met someone," she says, all non-sequitory, "after I left you."

He says nothing, but his thumb begins to brush the side of hers in slow, even strokes.

"I'd been in San Salvador a couple of months, and I wasn't doing too well. I could barely leave my room most days -- all I wanted to do was sleep, but every time I did I'd wake up screaming from nightmares. I started drinking to anesthetise."

She looks away from Angel, focusing on the empty spaces behind his right shoulder.

"I don't remember exactly the first time I met Gru but I know that after I did, I began to drink less, sleep less, live more. I left my room. I went shopping."

"He helped you," says Angel.

 _Deficiency alert_ , she thinks, but not unkindly. " _No_ , he was a hottie. Heir to a European textile corporation, and rich and handsome no less. And I wanted you out of my head. So I shook off the crazy and set about getting the delicious Gruben Salugg III's attention." She nods satisfactorily. "Totally succeeded, too."

She brings her gaze back to his.

"He treated me right, you know? Everything expensive. He called me his princess and acted like I was a queen. It was he who suggested I do something about my scars."

She watches Angel's eyes drop down to her neck, and she nods.

"My arm too -- no third degree burns for his girl, he said."

Angel says, quietly, "you loved him."

"I loved what I thought he represented," she says. "Gru was sweet and accommodating. He looked great and, with him lavishing on me, I thought, 'hey, I can't have been _so_ bad -- not if I can have someone like Gru in my life -- that's a good person reward!' He wanted nothing more than to live in a fairytale with me at the top of his tower and, okay, he didn't make me feel safe, and he couldn't stop my nightmares, but he told me -- over and over -- how deserving I was of this life with him until Sunnydale seemed very far, far away."

She shakes her head.

"He wasn't the smartest guy."

"What happened?"

She sighs. "Demon party in the resort got out of hand one night. It had happened before but this was Gru's cherry picking and it showed. He'd never had to face anything more taxing than a New York mugging before then. He eschewed my epically brilliant plan of 'run and hide' and --" She breathes out, remembering -- "They tore his head from his body."

Angel grimaces. "I'm sorry."

She pushes the images of that morning after, of finding his body still in the restaurant when she'd finally ventured from her room, out of her mind and clears her throat. "I took the next flight back to LA firma."

"I'm sorry," Angel says again.

She waves a dismissive hand. "It's my MO, you see? Fall, fracture, flee and freak. I love, I hurt, I run, I crazy."

"You're not crazy."

"Pot meet kettle," she says, rolling her eyes. "But it's okay, you know? So there's a few limits to my sanity. So what? Everybody's got issues and at least I know mine now. Most people I've known were utterly clueless about theirs." She thinks, _Xander, Buffy, my parents, Gru, Willow_...

Bringing their joined hands to his mouth, he kisses the back of her palm. "I think you're very brave," he says. "To keep trying again."

 _Four and a half years of solitude begs and differs_ , she thinks. "And I think you'll regret this." She's not a safe bet, she knows, and not even close to being a sane one. Despite whatever resolutions are in her brain right now, the first time she leaves his side she'll no doubt jump the next train back to Anxiety Central and derail spectacularly, no survivors.

He shakes his head, features resolute and determined. "Never."

  


* * *

  


When she yawns for, like, the fifth time in as many minutes, Angel says, "you need sleep."

"Duh." She rests her head against the back of his sofa sleepily. "It's vampire-pm."

He runs his fingertips down her calf. "You can take my bed."

 _Like she wasn't going to anyway?_ With a groan, she swings her legs off of his lap and gets herself up, holding out a hand when she's all vertical. "C'mon."

He places his hand in hers, and stands as well, but doesn't step after her. "Maybe --"

"What maybe?"

With his free hand, he brushes a swath of hair off her shoulder. "I can stay here. On the sofa."

"For what now?"

"Well, you -- the last time you were here --" He gestures awkwardly. "I just thought you might be more comfortable if --"

She rolls her eyes. "No offence, Angel, but regardless of whether you're beside me or not, I'm still probably going to go hulk on you come morning. Just because I'm all issues-cognisant girl tonight, doesn't mean I won't be when I open my eyes." She pauses, considering. "Which is a pretty good reason for _you_ to not want to be there, actually. My bad." She lets go of his hand.

He takes it back again immediately. "I do want to."

Wow -- if she'd known Angel was this big of a softie back in Sunnydale... "That's sweet," she says, smiling a little. " _Suicidal_ , but sweet."

Turning, she starts towards his bedroom, his steps following hers. He flicks off the lights as they leave the main room. When she's beside his bed, she toes off her shoes, unthreads her belt, and pulls the knot out of her hair. She slides between the covers on his bed and lies on her side so she can watch him get in beside her.

He turns off the lamp beside the bed, plunging the room into darkness.

She breathes shallowly, waiting for her eyesight to adjust, waiting for him to settle under the covers. His bed is smaller than she's used to, and much smaller than she's ever shared with another person, and she can feel his leg brushing against her knee, can feel the oh-so-close _sense_ of him.

"Promise me you won't turn evil while I sleep?" she asks softly.

He turns his head on the pillow, facing her. "I won't ever hurt you," he says. "I couldn't."

"Angel," she says, voice catching, "every night you kill me in my dreams."

His hand fumbles underneath the blankets and sheet until he can find hers. He threads his fingers between hers and holds on steady and sure. "Not anymore."

For a moment she thinks she can feel tears pricking at her eyes. She concentrates on the touch of his palm against hers. "I want that I could believe that," she whispers.

Angel squeezes her hand, just once, just gently. Quietly, he says, "I wish you could too."

_I wish..._

She closes her eyes and does not cry.

  


* * *

  


His hand slides between her thighs.

Parting her legs, she cants her hips closer to his hand, stretching on the rumpled sheets. Her eyes are closed, senses reduced, and she focuses on the coolness of the sheets beneath her naked flesh, the flush of heat moving under her skin, the whisper of sound as he shifts beside her on the mattress.

His mouth presses against the side of her breast at the same time his fingers slip across her sex, pulling at her attention. She doesn't know which touch to lean into more, and arches helplessly.

His finger pushes inside her.

Breathing out sharply, she reaches out with one hand, finding the back of his head and guiding his mouth down over her breast until he can lick and suck at her nipple. The resulting sensations spark down towards her womb, joining the heat building from his finger as it strokes in and out of her sex.

She's going to come if he keeps doing what he's doing and, oh _god_ , she hopes he keeps doing what he's doing so she can come, and --

Her right leg pushes out further, brushing against his cock, and -- oh, she was _wrong_ , she's not going to come, not yet, not until she can feel him inside her, the solid pierce of his flesh into hers...

Shifting her hand from his hair to his shoulder, she pushes back hard, rolling him off his side. His fingers pull free of her sex, slicking wetness over the outside of her thigh as he steadies her quick straddle of his hips. She reaches between them and takes his cock in hand, tugging gently once, twice, before holding him still as she slides down over him, seating him deep inside of her.

Sitting up, she rolls back her shoulders and opens her eyes.

Across the room, Buffy stares back at her. She's leaning against the hotel bathroom door jamb, bright lights haloing her from behind. Her clothing is Walmart-thrift, the scar on her face vivid and jagged.

"He'll never love you," Buffy says, kohl-rimmed eyes staring. "Not like he loves me."

Beneath her, Angel's hands span the curves of her hips, guiding her slow rocking. The sliding drag of his cock inside her is breathstealing.

"You're wrong," she says, gasping. She can feel her orgasm rushing through her.

Buffy raises an eyebrow. "Am I?"

 _Yes_ , she thinks. _Yes, yes, yesohgodplease_...

She looks down and sees Angelus grinning up at her. "Hey, baby."

  


* * *

  


She wakes gasping, body thrumming and mind churning. Part of her is wondering at her not-quite-almost-but-still-mostly-sort-of-yes-yes-definitely-yes-nightmare and part of her is trying to breathe through the tension in her muscles and bones and skin and part of her is thinking that this is not her bed, not her bedroom, not her apartment, but if she could just slip back into sleep, back into that nightdream, she would be coming so hard...

She opens her eyes wide.

His hand is between her legs. His fingers are tucked tight in the apex of her thighs, the side of his thumb pressing against the seam of her jeans, his wrist resting over the location of her scar. Even without moving, she can tell that her flesh is slick and ready.

He's sleeping beside her, his features smooth and ridge-less and peaceful, but as she stares, as she breathes shallow and quick, his lips part slightly and his nose twitches.

She watches him draw in a breath, then a deeper one, and she knows the instant he smells her arousal because his eyes flash open, surprise erasing sleep.

"Angel," she breathes out.

His hand flexes slightly between her thighs, dragging a soft moan from her, and his eyes go impossibly large. His arm tenses like he's going to pull free and she squeezes her knees together before he can.

" _Don't_ ," she manages. Her muscles tremble around his hand, the slight shifts of movement they've made increasing her need almost to breaking point. She's so close...

For one breathless moment they do nothing. Then --

"Kiss m--" she starts, but before she can get the words out all proper-like, Angel's moving. His mouth slants over hers, hard and fast, his tongue diving into her mouth. His hand simultaneously pushes up against her, grinding into the damp denim between her thighs as he leans over her, forcing her down into the mattress.

She comes hard, arching into him until it feels like her spine could snap from the tension, his hand rubbing over her sex, his mouth still eating hers.

It's difficult to breathe, to think, to _breathe_ and she tears her mouth from Angel's desperately, gasping, shoving at the blankets tangling around them. He pulls his hand out from between her legs but doesn't go far, his fingers moving to pop open the button on her jeans and to tug open her zipper. As he yanks the denim down her legs, she reaches for his own waistband, twisting in the brace of his arms.

Their clothes disappear in quick tugs and pulls, but she still has her bra on, and she thinks Angel's pants are still trailing from one foot, when he rolls over on top of her and thrusts in deep.

She forces her legs further apart, kicking at the tangle of blankets and clothes until her leg can hook around his hip, dragging him down and closer.

He sinks into her, bottoming out. They both groan.

Angel shoves at the pillows beneath her, pushing them out of the way, before bracing his forearms on the mattress, caging her in. His hips pull back, his cock sliding almost all of the way out of her, before pushing forward again. She feels the slow, heavy thrust in every skin cell and muscle and bone in her body. Her toes curl.

He sets a steady, not-quite-harsh rhythm, rocking her into the mattress. His mouth returns to hers, kissing her deeply, and she meets him on every thrust, at every kiss, pushing her hips up to his and sucking on his tongue.

His bedroom fills with the sounds of sex; the rasp of her breathing, the slick slap of his belly against hers, the creak of his headboard against the wall.

Her second orgasm is subtler, a slow build and gentle fade. She relaxes into the spreading warmth and feels it move through her like slow bubbling champagne. Her arms wind around his neck and she lets him move her as he needs to, lets him take what he wants, the stroke of his cock inside her a delicious continuing pressure.

He comes hard, his hips slamming against hers in an uneven staccato. On the last push, his arms tremble slightly.

She ends their kiss and sucks in a deep breath. Her legs are still locked around his hips and she's not so sure she can move them yet. Or, maybe, _ever_. He doesn't pull out of her and she breathes in again.

"So," she tries, exhaling. "Uh... good morning?"

The trembling in his arms increases until she's a delayed reaction or two away from panicking and --

Laughing, Angel collapses on top of her fully before quickly rolling to the side. He slides out of her but pulls her body with him, keeping her close.

His laughter is infectious and she starts to giggle in response.

"Yeah," he manages, eventually, smiling. "It is."

  


* * *

  


She salvages her jeans and underwear from the tangle of blankets at the foot of his bed, but her top, on the other hand...

"What is with you demons and your propensity for fashion damage?" Rummaging through his closet, she fishes a white shirt out of a sea of black, brown and navy, and slips it on. "If you're not ruining someone else's sensibilities with your own incredibly bad faux-pas', you're all 'grr, argh, rip' on DKNY."

Still on the bed, Angel says nothing.

"And don't look at me like that," she says, anticipating his downturned expression. "You might be allergic to sunlight, but most of the things I have to do each day can only be done outside of twilight." From her bag, she pulls out a small brush and starts running it through her hair, trying to gain some semblance of decency to her appearance. "This town hasn't been exactly night-friendly the past few years."

"I don't want you to go," he says quietly.

She sighs, pushing aside the temptation to angle for a compliment or two as to why not. "I know." Dropping the brush back into her bag, she leaves her hair free and loose and tousled-chic. "I kinda don't want to either." Returning to the bed, she sits on the edge and looks at him. "And if I could promise us that I won't go all psycho-girl once I'm outside, I would."

"But you can't."

"But I can't," she agrees. She perks up suddenly. "But, hey! Look at it this way -- if I do, that'll probably mean I'll be back here all super fast."

Angel does not look reassured. "Stake in hand?" he asks dryly.

She shrugs. "Take the good, take the bad."

Standing again, she leans over and kisses him, coaxing away his bad-moodiness. She stops before she can forget to, pulling away from the hands he has moved to her hip and shoulder.

"Stay," he says, reaching after her.

She backs away from the bed and grabs her bag, sliding the strap over her head and shoulder. "The diner," she counters. "Tonight. You can buy me a coffee."

"Seven."

She frowns. That might be when the sun sets, but. "Nine," she says, firmly.

"Eight."

"And this became a democracy when exactly?" She shakes her head and keeps moving. "I don't think so."

At the door to his bedroom, she looks back and takes him in, frowny face and all, naked and rumpled and beautiful on the sex-mussed blankets.

"See you, Angel," she says.

She's gone and walking up the stairs before he can change her mind.

  


* * *

  


Despite her historical intentions, and what she knows to be best, and the thread of freakin' discontent lacing through her post-orgasmic haze... she's at the diner by eight.

"Refill, hon?"

Shaking her head, she shifts her cup to the opposite end of the table. "No," she says, "thanks. I'm waiting for someone."

The waitress shrugs, and walks away, leaving her to go back to her waiting and watching and oh holy Abercrombie and Fitch -- almost seven years on and she's still just the girl biding time for Angel's attention.

What on any earthly reality is she _doing_ here? Is she _trying_ to see how girl interrupted she can make herself? To deliberately wish off the mostly brain-healthiness of the past four years?

Hell, she even rushed through her spar with Jean-Claude and her usual library time in order to get here all early and --

_Screw it._

Giving in to the feeling of sick twisting through her, she slides out of the booth and stands, turning towards the exit.

The diner door opens.

Frozen, she watches as Angel walks inside, a black look on his face that rapidly wipes into one of surprise when he sees her standing beside the booth.

Her mouth engages while her brain is still rebooting. "You're early," she says.

He takes a hesitant step towards her and, when she doesn't move, then another, surer one. "So are you."

Thinking again, she turns back to the booth and slides in, aware of him following. When he's sitting in his usual position opposite her, he rests his hands on the table top between them.

Her hands are also on the table top, and her forefinger twitches towards where his right hand lies within a breath of hers.

Awkwardness settles, like they're back on that first ever coffee non-date, all _how've you been?_ and a country n' western song in the making.

Exhaling sharply, she says in a rush, "Angel, you make me absolutely _mental_."

Angel has her hand in his before she can blink, his fingers wrapping around hers like she's his one and only deadline. "Yeah." He looks beyond relieved at her words. "You too."

  


* * *

  



	4. The Street

"Cordelia!"

"Just a minute!" Lunging to the left, she snatches the chunk of driftwood out of the shallows before it can float away again and tosses it to Angel. "Here!"

Spinning, he grabs the two-by-four out of the air and sweeps it around in a wide arc, caving in the side of the demon's head with a sickening crunch and splattering orange ichor across the pier posts. The demon's body crumples into the sandy waves.

"Okay," she says, panting. " _Eww_."

Dropping the wood onto the sand, Angel wades to where she's still standing knee-deep in the Pacific. "You okay?" he asks, taking hold of her upper-arm.

"You mean apart from the oh so obvious damage to my clothes, shoes, hair and makeup?" She pushes a section of sea-sprayed hair over her shoulder and grimaces. "Yeah, fine. Just peachy."

"It didn't cut you?"

Hello? "Can you _smell_ me bleeding?"

"No..."

She raises an eyebrow all, 'well, then?' until he looks away, semi-sheepish and less with the worry.

"Right." He clears his throat. "So, um -- you still want that ice-cream?"

  


* * *

  


"Just once," she says, brushing at her jeans like that will get the ocean off of her. "I mean, other women? They go for a walk on the pier with a guy and it's all, 'hey, isn't this a lovely and boring moment I'll never have to live again', whereas when _I_ go?"

"You get attacked by an Ithsic demon," says Angel.

"I get attacked by a Lisp demon!"

"If it's any consolation, I don't think it _meant_ to attack you."

"Really? Wow. That makes me feel _so_ much better." She pauses briefly, holds up a finger. "No, wait, _it doesn't_."

Stopping at the edge of the beach, she reaches out to grab a hold of his shoulder for balance as she stands on one leg and tries to empty the sand out of her shoe.

Looking down, Angel says, "I'm sorry."

 _Oh, for_... "Seriously?" She changes legs with a small hop. "You're gonna take this one? Add it to the brood file and label it, 'not my fault but it's been a slow month quota-wise, so what the hey'?"

He looks up again all affronted. "Hey!"

"Exactly." Shaking her head, she straightens up and places her other hand on his shoulder, stepping in close so that they're all but embracing. He moves his hands to her hips and makes it real. "Repeat after me," she starts.

He cuts her off. "After me," he says, dutifully.

She rolls her eyes. "Smart ass."

A quirk of a grin on his lips now. "Smart ass."

"Enough!"

"Eno--"

Leaning in and up, she covers his mouth with her own, kissing him quiet. His grip on her tightens, one hand smoothing around to the small of her back and pulling her in against him. She licks at his lips and tastes salt; presses her body to his and feels desire unspool from deep in her belly.

Against his mouth, she mumbles, "let's forget the ice-cream."

His kiss turns hard and fast. "Hell yes."

  


* * *

  


In the semi-darkness, she lies on her stomach, muscles trembling with little after-shocks and sweat cooling on her skin.

"Better than ice-cream?"

She smiles at the far wall, feeling the mattress shift as he turns onto his side behind her. One of his hands moves to touch her back, fingers smoothing along the length of her spine. "Better than the demon."

He starts tracing patterns across her shoulder blades. "Cordy?"

"Mmm?"

"Why do you go the library every evening?"

Her smile fades, but she keeps her contentment in her voice easily enough. "Don't let the cheerleader moves fool you; I've been reading since I was four."

"That's not an answer," he says. His finger loops low, brushing the side of her ribs. She shivers.

"Correction -- not an answer you _like_."

Persistent, he says, "why? I know you said that in high school you used to read up on demons with that Watcher, but he's not here anymore."

 _No_ , she thinks, old guilt flaring, _he isn't_. Squashing the spike of grief that goes with it, she turns her head so she's looking at Angel. She gives him a teasy-flirty smile. "Jealous?"

He doesn't smile back. "I don't understand."

"I'm a layery kind of person, obviously. Full of surprises."

"You're looking for something," he says, and his tone is the closest he's come to accusatory since that hotel night oh so long ago, when he accused her of keeping him leashed. His hand stills on her back.

"Yes."

"What?"

 _Anya. Redemption. Home. All of the above?_ "I'll know it when I find it."

"It?"

He's not going to let this go, she realises. She goes offensive. "Why do you want to know so bad?" She raises an eyebrow. "Afraid I'm smarter than you?"

Still with the no smiling, but his hand starts to move again, palm curving over the muscles in his back. "I want to help you."

She tenses and doesn't even try to hide the reaction, a swirl of emotions rushing through her. She's down to less than seventeen months now, and no closer; logically, she knows, she could use the help. What if...

... he tried to stop her.

Forcing herself to relax, she smiles again, low and soft. "You're gorgeous."

"I mean it," he says. "I want --"

"I heard you," she says. Pushing herself up, she leans into him, leans over him, urging him onto his back. Her left hand moves to his chest and draws down slowly, tracing his ribs, his muscles, the curve of his hip. "And I love that you're all white knight on a steed for me, I do." She palms him, fingers stroking around his cock. "But right now --" she kisses his bottom lip, "-- what I want --" a kiss in the hollow above his collarbone, "-- what I _need_ \--" she licks a stripe down his chest, "-- is help with something far --" a small nip to the skin, "-- more --" she blows a puff of air over the head of his cock, "-- physical."

When she takes him into her mouth, he hisses, his hands moving to her hair, fingers tangling in the long strands. His head presses back into the pillows.

She smiles.

  


* * *

  


The thing about sleeping with Angel? It actually doesn't change things much. She still goes to her savate classes, still goes to the library to read the books she can't buy and buys the books she can, still dreams of Sunnydale and the Plaza and of Angelus, still chants for Anya on the dark moon and drinks a fifth of scotch when she doesn't show. She even still manages to fend off a vampire or two every fortnight or so.

In fact, the only difference she can really figure between before and these last six weeks? The awesome amount of fantastic sex now fortifying her hormones.

"You know, this whole walking me back to my place thing? Way chivalrous of you." Especially when it's been raining all day and the wind is still brisking along all ice-like and Angel's presence between her and the elements is, like, uber-warm and protective.

Beside her, Angel shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs like he's all self-conscious. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

"Bad thing? Nah." She nudges his shoulder with her own. "I just can't help but think the oodles of unmarried, undead sex we had this morning kinda cancels out the Victorian bonus points."

He almost misses a step at her words, but his voice is remains pretty much steady. "Oodles?" he repeats.

"Well, that's not the _technical_ term, of course."

"Of course," he says, dryly. As they cross the street and move up onto the sidewalk outside her apartment building, he oh so subtly switches sides so that he's the one closer to the road.

She smiles. "Ladies and gentlemen," she quips softly, "my boyfriend, the white knight."

He hears her and turns to face her with a wide, wide grin. "Boyfriend?" he repeats.

She rolls her eyes. "I think I meant 'dork', actually." Digging her keys out of her bag as she walks up her stairs, she turns and leans against her front door. "But, you know, thanks and all."

He leans in a little. "For the chivalry?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.

She smirks and winds her fingers into his jacket lapels, tugging him closer. "Is this where I correct you by saying for the sex?"

"I wouldn't say no to a little gratitude." His mouth brushes her cheek.

Tilting her head, she moves her mouth along his jawline, nibbling at the curve of his neck and letting her voice turn all breathy, "I think you got enough of that earlier."

He makes a growly noise and presses against her, finding her mouth and kissing her hard. His hand drags up her side until he's cupping her cheek.

On the other side of the door, her phone rings.

Startled, she pulls back from the kiss.

"What?" asks Angel.

Turning, she fumbles with her keys to unlock the door. "What time is it?"

"Uh... a little after eleven -- why?"

She wrenches open the door. "Little late for telemarketers, you think?" Leaving him at her threshold, she races for her cordless, running the list of people who have her number through her mind. It's a short list. With the exception of Frank, pretty much no one --

The answering machine picks up the call before she can. "... yeah, yeah, yeah -- oh, hey, Queen C? Girlfriend, it's Clem! Clement Leary! We totally chatted that one time when Larry was all bathroom break during one of your gossipy 'remember when' Friendsters? Well, anyway, before he passed on and all, Larry and I were playing poker this one time and he totally mentioned how you were hot for the vengeance crowd and all? So I just thought I'd, like, reach out and let you know that D'Hoffryn totally chose Sunnydale's very own hellmouth for this year's office party. I mean, I know, right? So, anyway, if you're still wanting to scratch that itch, you should definitely come n' visit before tomorrow's done and dusted. There's gonna be dumplin--"

The machine beeps, cutting off the call.

Frozen, she stands there, hand still outstretched for the phone, Clem's words echoing in her apartment and in her mind, spinning her out way faster than anything else _ever_.

D'Hoffryn. Sunnydale. Vengeance.

_Anya!_

Spinning on her heel, she takes three steps towards her sofa before she realises she has no idea where to start. She needs -- "Weapons! Sunnydale in the winter? So totally not the time to skimp on the defensive arts -- and transport! I'll have to hire something, a soft-top, maybe? No, probably not -- oh, and clothes, and Diminichi's Codex as a backup..." which she lent to Angel last week, "... do you --"

She looks up and blinks.

"Angel?"

The doorway, her alcove, is empty. Darting forward, she heads outside, and down her steps, looking --

"Angel!" Running, she catches up with him half-way down her street and grabs at his arm. "Hey, wait! What's --"

He turns to face her, his expression weird. "Vengeance demons?"

She frowns. "You knew I was looking for something," she points out.

He makes an incredulous noise. "Not this!"

She lets go of his arm, not liking his tone. "Dismissive much? Who made you the king of lost and found?"

"What? You think I should be _happy_ for you?"

"For my first massive break in four years? Hell yes you should be happy for me! There should be fireworks you're so damn happy for me!"

"Oh, well, forgive me. I always figured a celebration should happen when something good occurs, and discovering the woman I love is fucking _insane_ doesn't usually qualify!"

She bristles. "I am _not_ insane!"

In the distance, thunder rumbles.

"Right, because searching out lower beings _deliberately_ just smacks of intelligence!"

There'll definitely be some smacking in a moment, that much she's willing to guarantee. "What the hell did you think I was searching for? A rentable ski chalet in fourteenth century Europe? The Treshok demons secret moisturising tips?"

"I thought you were looking for protection charms and demon weak spots; ways to survive!" He glares at her. "That is what you kept telling me, after all. 'Oh, Angel, my apartment smells like black root and dragon's blood bark because I read somewhere that that and street fair incense makes for a good all-purpose ward!'"

Oh, she _so_ does not sound like that! But as for the rest -- "You're damn right I was looking for a way to survive! This reality is for the dead and I ain't one of them, Angel. I told you that when we first hooked up that first time. A vengeance demon created this reality and that same vengeance demon will uncreate it just as soon as I can sit on her ugly, wrinkly, old lady hag face until she cries uncle."

"Reali--" He stops short, a look of shock spreading across his face. "You're talking about that alternate dimension fairytale again."

She crosses her arms. "You say fairytale, I say home."

"Oh, so that makes it sane, does it? You're gonna throw yourself into a hellmouth and hope you come out in a better dimension? My god, Cordelia -- how is that anything less than suicidal? Don't you hold any regard for your life?"

She spreads her arms out wide, gesturing broadly. " _What_ life? The one where I'm going broke? Where I'm constantly on the lookout for who's going to next try to take a bite out of me? Where everyone I went to school with, not to mention an entire town almost, are dead and undead thanks to my stupid little wish? _That_ life? Oh, yeah, I'll be real sorry to see the back of that. Absolutely _devastated_."

Angel stares at her, silent. Behind him, a flash of lightning splits the night sky.

"What?" she snaps. "My reasons aren't good enough for you? Are too selfish? Newsflash, Angel -- I'm the most self-centered person you've ever met, _remember_?"

His words, five years ago, _have you_ always _been this selfish?_

The anger and shock and frowniness has leeched from his features, his face blanking. "I haven't forgotten," he says quietly.

She blinks at his sudden affectlessness. "Well, then," she says inadequately. "There you go."

"Yeah," he says, slowly, "here I go."

 _Huh?_ "Angel?"

He meets her gaze steadily. "Goodbye, Cordelia."

 _What?_ Dumbfounded, she watches him turn and start to walk away. "Angel!"

He doesn't stop, and he doesn't look back.

"Angel!"

  


* * *

  


It doesn't take her long to pack what she needs (weapons, weapons and more weapons), but getting a car proves way more problematic. None of the hire companies seem to be open this late (this early?), and the taxi service just laughs at her when she tries them. (Which is probably for the best because, even excluding the expense, and Frank's reaction _to_ the expense, having a non-local behind the wheel in Sunnydale? Not her idea of safety first.)

Outside, the rain that had blanketed the city all yesterday picks up again, a brisk wind sweeping water against her windows.

Though she should probably sleep -- she and Angel didn't get a whole lot of rest the night before -- her brain is way too wired to even contemplate the idea. She can't stop thinking about what Angel said (and he is so wrong -- this _reality_ is what's suicidal, not her attempts to get home), and the nightmare that will be stepping back into Sunnydale (what if there's another big bad in town? what if they try to kill her? what if _anything_ tries to kill her?), and what will happen when Anya fixes reality (what's her life even like now in the proper reality? did she marry Keanu Reeves like she had planned all through high school?), and how Angel just walked away like it was nothing (like _she_ was nothing), and what will happen to this life when she does fix everything (will it go poof? will it just fade away?), and what is the Angel in her reality doing these days (is he evil again? is he still Buffy's One True Love? would he go for a coffee with her anyway?), and, god, oh so many more things, way too many to focus and name and properly think about.

Curling up on her sofa, she stares at the clock on her wall and waits for morning.

  


* * *

  


There's a crucified body above the _Welcome to Sunnydale_ sign.

Main Street is choked with burnt out car wrecks and crushed storefronts.

An empty crater lies where the high school used to be.

Parking her car on a side street, she follows the sound of music spilling out of the Bronze. A small crowd is mingling outside the entrance but she pushes through easily enough, nodding to the bouncer as he lifts the rope to admit her.

Inside it's warm, the press of bodies doing more than enough to combat the winter chill outside, and she shrugs out of her jacket, leaving it on the pile of coats near the door. Willie's behind the bar, and she takes a beer from him as she passes on her way up to the mezzanine.

It's less peoplely up high, and she sips her drink as she leans against the railing, surveying the room. Down below, she can see Harmony dancing with two older looking guys (she's pretty sure the one on the left is a vampire) and Aura gossiping with Ginger at one of the tables. _Dingoes Ate My Baby_ is playing on stage with some girl singing about magic trees or something equally nonsensical, and Xander and Jesse and Willow are snuggled into one of the couches, listening intently. It's tempting to up-end her beer on them.

Movement behind her. As the singer moves into a new song about leaving someone they love, Angel slides his hands around her waist and down over her hips, pressing his body up against hers.

"You're late," he says, brushing his mouth over the side of her neck.

"Hmm." She tilts her head to the side, allowing him better access. "I think I took a wrong turn somewhere. Got a little lost."

He nips at her skin. "Forgot your way?"

Her eyes drift shut as his fangs sink into her jugular. " _Never_."

One of his hands slides down, curving to her inner thigh, fingers pressing against the scar he gave her, and the music plays on and on and on...

  


* * *

  


She wakes to the sound of the dialtone echoing from her cordless phone, to the rumble of low bass thunder and steady rain.

She's on her sofa, neck stiff and limbs cramped, and for a moment she can't understa--

Oh. Oh!

Bolting upright, she scrambles off the sofa. The cordless tumbles to the floor and she snatches it back up hastily, glancing at her watch as she thumbs through the numbers she jotted down earlier. It's a little after noon -- oh, god, she's slept practically the whole day away! what the hell's the matter with her! -- and as she waits for the rental company to pick up, she frantically tries to reorganise her thinkings. If she can get going within the next hour or two, she can be in Sunnydale by --

"Wolfram & Hart, Attorney's at Law -- how can I direct your call?"

Damnit! Hanging up, she tries again, this time double-checking that she's pressing the right buttons.

It seems to ring forever.

"LA Car Rentals, this is Bob."

_Thank god._

  


* * *

  


While she waits for the car to be ready -- they've promised her a nice safe, stylish jeep, perfect for a drive up the coast (she neglected to mention the part where her final stop is a hellmouth) -- she showers and changes and rechecks her weapons bag. She has plenty of vampire protectives, but not so much for the fighting of random beasties. Hopefully her standard axe and run technique will work on whichever monster it is terrorising the locals this week.

She cancels her savate sessions for the next two days, and leaves a message with Frank's secretary advising she'll be out of town briefly, and then calls for a cab to take her to the car collection lot. Grabbing her bag, she locks up her apartment and heads down to the street to wait, struggling with her umbrella as she goes.

Angel's outside.

Stopping short, she stares at him. He's leaning against a car on the opposite side of the street, apparently totally unconcerned with the steady drench of rain, and she blinks stupidly.

"What --"

"I still think you're insane," he says, "but you keep saving me so I figure it's only fair I repay the favour."

 _\-- the hell?_ "Huh?"

He gestures at the car he's leaning against -- big and black and... a convertible? "I have a car," he says, obviously.

Her brain finally clicks back into drive. Adjusting her grip on her bags, she flicks her rapidly soddening hair back over her shoulder as best she can. "You'll help me?"

He shakes his head. "No." After a beat, he continues with, "but... I won't try and stop you, either."

It's probably the best compromise she could have hoped for and, with his presence, helpful or not, probably the best chance for success she'll ever get.

Pushing away from the car, he crosses the street and reaches down, taking her bag. She lets him.

"C'mon," he says. "Before the rain stops."

She follows him to the car, and watches him open the door for her. As she moves to step in, a thought -- a memory -- comes to mind. Looking up at him, she tries for a smile. "Tinted windows?"

His own smile is small and tight, but real enough. "Darkest your money can buy."

  


* * *

  



	5. The Plymouth

Roughly twenty miles out from the Sunnydale limits, Angel says, "what happened to your car?"

"Hmm?" They've been driving mostly in silence since they left LA, reversing the trip they made five years ago, and it takes a moment for the query to pierce the churning apprehension-excitement-fear vibe she's got going on.

"You had a BMW before," he clarifies. "When we left --"

"Oh! Yeah. Well," she shrugs, "that was my dad's. After the whole blackmailing-for-my-inheritance milestone, he sort of revoked my driving privileges." Adjusting the passenger side mirror, she watches a mile marker sign recede behind them. "I replaced it with this way shiny Porsche after my beachy Bahamas days, all black and beautiful and wicked slick."

"Where is it now?" When she looks across at him, he adds, "I haven't seen you drive recently."

She makes a face and turns back to the window. "Turns out playing crash test dummies with a vampire? Not exactly covered by insurance. She decapitated as she went through the windshield, I broke five ribs and turned my car into a very expensive paperweight."

On the old 'only five more minutes to Doublemeat Palace' billboard, someone has painted the words, _here there be monsters_ , over the fast food joint's logo. Grimacing, she forces herself to focus on what she was saying.

"I thought about buying another one but the whole 'vampires don't need invitations into small, confined spaces moving at a hundred-fifty miles per hour' thing really gave me the wiggins after that." Plus the fact that Frank would've had kittens had she started shopping for vehicles like she does shoes. "So, now I'm all bus and heels girl like it's totally the it thing."

"That's very... green? Of you?"

"Uh huh," she says distractedly, "that's me -- saving the planet one pair of Manolo Blahniks at a time. Stop the car!"

Angel slams on the brakes, his beast of a car swerving slightly as it comes to a stop in the middle of the road. "What? What's wrong?"

Throwing open her door, she gets out of the car. She can hear Angel shouting her name, but she ignores him as she stands on the edge of the road. It's still cloudy and overcast up above, despite the rain that had been drenching LA having eased somewhere around Oxnard, and on the far distant horizon line she can see the faint smudges of a shiny sun, its weak light gilding her hometown with gold in the moments before twilight. Effectly, it's kind of beautiful.

"Welcome home," she whispers.

The sun sets.

  


* * *

  


"So," says Angel, pulling up at a lightless intersection. "Where's this party?"

Good question. "The Bronze, I guess."

Angel grimaces. "You don't know?"

She shrugs. "You heard Clem's message -- all he said was Sunnydale today."

"Right."

The car doesn't move.

Looking over, she takes note of the grim look on his face, the white-knuckled grip he has on the steering wheel. "Hey," she says, "you okay?"

He doesn't look at her. "No," he says shortly. But he puts the car back into gear, and sets them to driving again, anyway. "Let's just get this over with."

Frowning, she lets it go.

  


* * *

  


The Bronze is empty.

Empty and _destructed_ , mores to the point. The alley facing wall has completely collapsed, rubble strewing outwards like a bomb's hit it bad. The roof and upper mezzanine is a dangling cobweb of broken beams and tangled cabling, gilded with moonlight and most all semblances of her previous haunt a shattered memory.

Standing at the edge of the debris, she picks up what looks like the end of a pool cue and absently twirls it baton-like. "Some party," she says softly.

Angel kicks at a chunk of brick, sending it skittering into the empty space where the stage used to sit. "I don't think this happened recently. The damage is too worn."

Like that makes it any better. She tries to remember how it used to look, back in the good old days of Sunnydale version one, but the images that come to mind are superimposed with how she saw it last -- cages and barbed wire and dead bodies, oh my.

"This is where we met," says Angel quietly, bringing her back, and she nods.

"Yeah." Twice, actually. Standing outside the restroom, and locked inside a cellar cage. The first time was safer, but the second changed her life. One day she should probably tell him by how much. "Do you wanna go down? Reminisce?" _Please say no_ , she thinks. _Just because you're all stoic undead most the time, doesn't mean there aren't some things nobody should have to relive._

Staring into the abyss, he shakes his head.

 _Thank god_. Throwing the pool cue into the ruins, she dusts her hands and turns and walks back to the car.

After a moment, Angel follows.

  


* * *

  


It's a full moon night, thank god, which makes it easier to see which streets are navigatable, and which aren't. Main Street, from what they can see, is definitely in the latter category, so she doesn't say much when he steers the car away from the town center and into the residential streets. She's pretty sure she knows where they're going -- Revello Drive is this way -- and she's about to object to the Buffy nostalgia when he takes a left, heading in the opposite direction.

"Where're you going?"

He glances at her briefly. "Crawford Street," he says, "there's a mansion there that might be where your party is at."

She blinks in surprise. "You remember the Crawford mansion?" She didn't think he'd ever lived there this time around.

He shrugs. "Heard Drusilla mention it before she and Darla left town back in '98."

Ah, right. "With Spike?"

He does a double-take, mouth opening like he wants to ask her how she knows about Spike, then slowly shakes his head as he remembers. "No," he says shortly. "He wasn't here very long. Never had any respect for the Master."

She rolls her eyes. "Like you did," she scoffs. She watches house after house pass by her window, broken windows and shattered doors all. "Where'd he go? Spike, I mean."

His mouth tightens. "Don't know. Drusilla mentioned something once about him swimming in Cleveland, but that could have meant anything. She wasn't exactly lucid at the time."

 _When is Drusilla ever?_ she wonders.

Angel takes a right onto High Street.

  


* * *

  


Crawford Street, Greenridge Lane and Hillcrest Road are gone.

Stunned, she stands next to Angel on the crest overlooking the hillside of _nothing_ that used to be --

"My home," she says. "Your mansion. Harmony and Aura's... they're all gone." She looks up at him disbelievingly. "Where'd they go?"

There's no debris, no rubble, no ruins. In the moonlight, the road they're on just crumbles away into dirt and rocks and trees and shrubby little bushes. The whole view looks eerily like the olden day photos in the Civic Center that show what Sunnydale used to be like, like, years before the mission people got all earthquaked out of the way for progress.

"Angel?"

He shrugs helplessly. "I don't know." He gestures at the nothing. "I just..."

She tries to work out what could do this -- what could turn back time on a patch of land that used to be the most exclusive in the area, mansions and ocean views and live-in help as far as the eye could see -- and just can't. Blowing up the Bronze? Totally imaginable. Reversing over a hundred years of property development? Inconceivable.

When she turns away, unable to stare at _nothing_ any longer, something beyond the glare of the Plymouth's headlights catches her eye. Backtracking to the driver's side, she leans in and switches them off.

"Cordy?" Angel asks, turning around.

Her eyesight adjusting, she waves at the town lying below them. "Look."

The town is lit haphazardly. Here and there she can see streetlights, but they're inconsistent, like most have been smashed dark. The houses which have lights on are few and far between, the illumination more of an echo than a bright beacon, and she assumes those are the places with people still living in them, their shutters drawn against the dangers of the night. She takes small comfort from the sight -- so the town's not completely dead then, after all.

The brightest, most visible glare, however, is coming from --

"Is that the --" starts Angel.

"The high school," she finishes, nodding. "Hellmouth central."

 _Anya_.

  


* * *

  


Angel manages to pick a path through the streets of her childhood easily enough, but now that she's so close, now that she can see her future within finger's reach, her impatience is legendarily high. As soon as he pulls into the school parking lot, she has the passenger door open and she's out of the car almost before it's stopped moving. She runs.

"Cordelia!"

Ignoring him, she heads straight for the main buildings. The gym is a dark shell on her left -- no game or school formal tonight by the looks of it -- but this is a demon she's after. If there's gonna be a party anywhere on these school grounds, it'll be right over the --

She stops.

She's in the courtyard just off the school's front entrance but, unlike the Bronze, this place isn't destroyed and, unlike her home, it's not nothing.

Black and pink streamers hang from the edges of the surrounding buildings. Misshapen balloons cluster above the weed-infested garden beds, each one glowing like a mini-flood light. A large tent-like canvas sail stretches between the building sides, shadowing the entire courtyard, and off to the right, a long trestle table covered with mostly-bare silver trays paces the width of the enclosure. Plastic cups and empty bottles and cigarette butts litter the ground.

Someone moves into her peripheral vision, and she turns to see a vampire ambling along the side of the buffet, a paper plate filled with scraps of pink seaweedy spaghetti, or maybe faded red liquorice, in his hands.

He looks up. "Entrail?" he offers, holding up his plate. "There's not much left, unfortunately, but you might be able to find a couple heart-blood dumplings still down the end."

She stares, mute.

Unconcerned with her silence, he shakes his head, whistling low. "Man, _hell_ of a party, am I right? The best of the season, for sure. I mean the band was pretty whack, but the food? Definitely worth the 'bring your own sacrifice' cover charge. You sure you don't want some of these intestines?"

From behind her, Angel asks, "it's over?"

The vampire nods. "Yeah. Most everyone teleported out when the kegs ran dry a few hours ago. That's the trouble with daytime gig's -- never enough to drain." He sniffs suddenly and steps closer to her, eyes gleaming golden. "Say, you smell awfully hum--"

Angel stakes him.

Numb, she steps through the spray of ash towards the spot where she and Anya had --

There's an orb there, hovering in mid-air. She reaches out.

"Don--"

The orb flares white as her fingertips graze its surface, a semi-transparent screen forming in the air above it. Stepping back, she watches as her own image appears on it, Anya by her side.

Bile churns into her stomach.

On the screen, Anya takes her pendant off. "Here," she says, "I think you need this more than I do right now."

She watches her screen-self -- and, oh god, was she ever that young? that naive looking? -- lift her hair away from her neck as Anya fastens the necklace around her neck.

"Yeah, I can use some luck," she says, her words echoing in the empty courtyard, "and a stick with pointy, sharp bits. If that Buffy wasn't... I swear. She's a pain."

Anya frowns. "But Xander -- he's an utter loser. Don't you wish..."

 _Don't wish_ , she thinks. _Don't ever. Don't don't don't..._

Her younger-self doesn't even blink. "I never would've looked twice at Xander if Buffy hadn't made him marginally cooler by hanging with him!"

"Really?" asks Anya, looking away off-screen.

"Yeah," she says, "I swear! _I wish Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale_."

Anya turns back all wrinkly and raw-meat face, a smile on her lips. "Done!"

The scene fades to black.

Behind her, Angel whispers, "Cordelia?"

A new image flickers onto the screen, the Bronze as it was when she found Angel, all death and vampire lair. It soft-blurs into a shot of the trashed Main Street, as a voiceover kicks in, narrating the images, the events, the repercussions of her wish. A montage of the different cemeteries about town, full of freshly laid graves. Scared little humans cowering in their homes.

The scenes shift away from Sunnydale and to the world at large. A demon bikie gang tearing up Vegas, piked heads bleeding from mounted positions on their handlebars. Dozens upon dozens of plane and train crashes, boat sinkings and multicar pileups. Witches and warlocks and creepy crawly things best left under kid's beds. A battle between two demons, bolts of lightning decimating everything around them. Tsunami's and heat waves and tornados and earthquakes.

And mixed in with all the scenes of death and destruction, shots of evil things celebrating. A trio of vampires, arms around each other's shoulders, give wide grins and thumbs up to a camera as blood drips off their chins. A chaos demon does an Irish jig in front of a burning building. A bar full of every kind of beastie imaginable roars approval at a wall-sized TV screen showing a flood washing away people and buildings.

The last shot shows Anya, haggard and grinning in an office cubicle, the tagline, _Winner of the Best New Reality, 11 December 1998_ , superimposed over the bottom of the screen. On her desk, a pewter trophy showing an earth cracked right through the middle.

Anya raises a coffee mug with the words, _you wish_ , written in capital letters on the side. "You're welcome," she says simply.

The screen disappears.

Slowly, she bends down and picks up an empty wine bottle lying at her feet. Holding it like a bat, she takes one step, two steps, and swings wide and hard. The orb flies from its suspended position with a sharp crack, striking the ground at a angle and shattering.

Behind her, Angel is silent.

Dropping the bottle, she walks away.

  


* * *

  


Except for the jagged, rocky hole in the centre of the room, the Library doesn't look much different.

Okay, so the bookshelves are empty, and the table and chairs are all gone, the cage wall all bent out of shape, what looks like scorch marks on the main counter, and dust and dirt thick over every possible surface, but the layout? The overwhelming sense of _familiarity_? All right there.

"Cordy?"

"I never got to go to Prom," she says quietly, trailing her fingers along the edge of the countertop. "I had the perfect dress thought out -- it was going to be red and long and make these little whispery noises when it moved over my skin -- and I never got to go." She looks up at the domed ceiling, surprised to see it still intact when the Hellmouth below is gaping and raw. "I'm twenty-three years old, Angel, and five years ago today I broke the world. I never graduated from high school, I'll likely be bankrupt before I'm thirty, the best chance I had at fixing my wish was apparently last called hours ago, and despite all of that -- despite _everything_ \-- all I can think about is how I never got to dance at my formal."

To her horror, she starts to cry.

She hasn't cried in so long, forever maybe, and to do so now, standing in this Library, in the Scoobie Command Center, an epitome of what she destroyed...

It's another betrayal.

Angel steps closer and places his hand on her shoulder. It's a small touch, hardly even comparable to the amount of contact they've been indulging in of late, but it evaporates any shadow of her control in an instant. Turning, she clutches at his shirt, pressing her face to his chest and feels his arms come up and around her, holding her against him.

Holding _her_.

 _I'm sorry_ , she thinks. _Oh, god, I'm so, so sorry_.

She's said it so many times, and in so many ways, to herself, to her memories, to her dreams and nightmares. Has tried to fix what she did with every book she's referenced, every spell she's memorised, every vampire she's staked and every demon she's learned how to avoid. Four years of her life, gone and devoted to finding a reset, a rewind, a way back to before she said those words.

_I wish Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale._

She should pull away from him. For what she did -- she _needs_ to pull away. She doesn't deserve this -- not his comfort, not his compassion...

Not him.

But when she tries to let go, he holds her tighter, holds her closer, holds her and takes a small, slight step to the right, and then to the left, and then back again, again and again, until they're turning in slow, swaying half-circles and semi-circles, book dust shifting beneath their feet.

Dancing. He's dancing her beside the Hellmouth. All because she -- because _he_ \--

She can't fight that.

Closing her eyes, she holds on and lets him.

  


* * *

  


It takes some time, but eventually she manages to get herself back under control. As their steps fade, she unclenches her fingers and releases her grip on his shirt, wiping at her eyes and cheeks. Angel relaxes his hold on her as she moves back a step, and she takes his hand before he can completely stop touching her. He laces his fingers with hers.

"Okay?" he asks.

Honestly? "No," she says. Shifting to face the room, she sighs. "Seems larger than I remembered."

He accepts the change in topic without protest. "The books," he says. "They made the room feel... fuller."

"You've been here? Before, I mean?"

He nods. "Once. Before Darla and Willow and Xander caught me. I was looking for a book, and I had heard the librarian here had an extensive collection."

That's putting it mildly. "Yeah," she says, "Giles loved his dusty old tomes alright."

She looks around and pictures the Library as it used to be, the smell of paper heavy in the air, the dull yellow glow from the desk lamps, Xander's inappropriate humour and Willow's nerdy enthusiasm. Buffy's impatience, Oz's zen, Giles' distractedness and Angel's silence. Between them, they'd foiled every big bad who'd looked to destroy the town and world...

... until her.

Straightening her spine, she turns and looks up at Angel. He's staring at the hole in the floor like a part of him wants nothing more than to jump in and find out exactly what sort of beastie can make such a mess, and she tightens her grip on his hand.

"C'mon," she says. "Let's get out of here."

He nods.

  


* * *

  


As they walk back to the Plymouth, she says, "there's one more place I want to see." She glances a look at him. "Before we leave."

She's expecting him ask where, and what for, why, but he just nods again, all complaisant and compliant.

"Okay," he says.

  


* * *

  


His agreeableness ends as the gates begin.

"No."

Ignoring him, she twists so she can reach the backseat and rummage through her weapons bag. Pocketing a couple vials, she grabs a stake and makes a couple of quick stabby motions, testing its weight.

"Cordelia --"

"Cemetery at night bad; cemetery at night in Sunnydale even worse -- I get it, Angel." The stake feels wrong in her hand, and she swaps it for an alternate. Straightening back into her seat all proper-like, she opens her door and gets out.

In the car still, Angel makes no movements akin to that of following her lead.

Sighing, she leans back down and raises an eyebrow at him. "You coming?"

  


* * *

  


The cemetery's not as well maintained as she remembers.

Side-stepping a crumbled tombstone, she heads south through the Catholics and towards the Lutherans and Methodists. Angel paces her, a sword in hand and a dark look on his face.

She has a fair idea as to where she's buried -- for all the business the Sunnydale diggers do, their records are astonishingly up-to-date -- and after a few wrong turns, she finds the proper section soon enough. The graves in this area are more prevalent and closer together, the markers made less from stone and more from wooden crosses embossed with little metal plates, and she has to get uncomfortably near to some in order to read the names.

She recognises far too many of the latter before she finds the one she came for.

"Jane Smith," reads Angel. He looks at her. "You knew her?"

Her mouth twists as she stares at the uneven and weedy grassy grave. "We both did."

"I don't --" starts Angel, confused.

"She didn't have any identification on her. When they found her -- well. There wasn't a lot left, you know? Your Master hadn't much cared for the sacredity of her chosenness."

Slowly, Angel says, "the Slayer..."

"Yup. Buffy Anne Summers in the decay."

His hand touches the small of her back, light and soft. "You were friends. Before."

She shakes her head. "Not really."

"Then why --"

_Because I always thought it was all about me until it was all about her and what she was doing to me and mine._

Because even if she did screw everything up, she didn't deserve this. None of us did.

Because I get it now. I understand. I know...

"No why," she says, cutting him off. "Just because." When she steps back from the grave, his hand slides to her hip and anchors there. "Let's get out of here, yeah?"

He nods. "Yeah."

  


* * *

  


They're almost back to the road that winds through the cemetery when she stops short and looks around, surprised. "Wait... I think I remem--"

"Well, well, well," says a voice off to the left. "What do we have here?"

 _Crap_.

As she turns, Angel draws up his sword and angles his body between hers and the -- she counts quickly -- four? no, _five_ vampires approaching.

Quintuple crap.

Gripping her stake, she tries to work out which one's the weakest. Angel'll go after the strongest, for sure, and --

"Cordy?" squeals one of the vampires.

\-- no _way_! "Harmony?"

Harmony squeals again and claps her hands together, pushing through the group of demons so that she can see better. "Oh my _god_! Look at you! How _are_ you? I haven't seen you in, like, _forever_!"

"I'm good, I'm good! And you? You're looking all..." Harmony grins, her fangs all bright in the moonlight. "... dead! Wow. When did --"

Harmony waves a hand. "Oh, graduation, you know."

"Wow. That's, um -- I'm sorry?"

Her former second-string Heather pffts. "Oh, _don't_ be. Being all evil is, like, totally the coolest thing _ever_! I mean, eating Mom and Dad and the help was kind of a bummer and all, but the never having to worry about wrinkles thing? Completely _awesome_."

One of the vampires beside Harmony growls. "Hey! Can we move this along already?"

"Yeah," agrees another one, "I'm hungry!"

Harmony's glee turns all abashed. "Oh, right." To her, she says, "hey, after I kill you and all? We should _totally_ do dinner, yeah?"

Uh, yeah, _no_. Before she can say as much, however, two of the vampires charge and that's red rover.

She sees Angel decapitate the first vampire into a waterfall of dust before the second charger comes at her, all determination and mindless hunger, and she has to turn her attention to her own survival.

She's expecting super martial arts and ass kicking, but this guy just runs straight at her, not even pausing or blinking or, more importantly, apparently _seeing_ her stake as she plunges it in and out of his chest. He dusts.

Surprised at how easy a kill that was, she turns to see if she can't help Angel with his groupsome of violence when something grabs her hair and _pulls_. Shouting at the smarting pain, she stumbles back several steps, arms like pinwheels, before dropping onto her ass like it's cheerleading tryouts and Amy's supreme klutziness all over again.

The pressure on her scalp eases a split second before a burst of star-inducing pain explodes across her cheek, and she yelps the pain away, trying to focus before she gets herself all dead and injured. Throwing herself to the side, she tumbles away from the direction of the punch and pushes back up to her feet.

"Harmony?"

Harm gives a cheery little hand wave. "Just like old times, hey, C?"

Kicking high and hard, she catches Harm under the chin with the toe of her shoe, forcing her back a step. "Oh, yeah, sure." _Stake, stake, where's her -- oh, crap!_ Forcing herself to attack regardless, she goes offensive, following up with two right hooks and a left upper cut. "Like the time you stole my Barbie in fourth grade." Harmony's kick catches her thigh, almost dropping her balance. Staggering, she covers with a sweep at Harmony's shins. Harmony jumps. "And the time you kissed my boyfriend behind the bleachers in eighth." Spotting her stake, she cartwheels away from Harmony's lunge, righting herself just in time for Harmony to land another punch. _Damnit_. Blinking the pain away, she slam the side of her hand into Harmony's throat. "And, oh yeah, the time you tried to kill me _right now_."

Harmony kicks her dead center in her chest, pushing all the air and oxygen and other breathing necessities out of her body in one whooshing gasp. Before she can recover, Harmony has her clutched from behind.

"Well, it's not like it's _personal_ or anything, you know? I mean, killing you is, like, super meaningful for me because it's _you_ and all."

Amazing how not at all better that makes her feel. Rather much like the grip Harmony has on her body, one hand in her hair and pulling her head to the side. "Harm --" Twisting, she slams her elbow into the side of Harmony's breast, feeling the tug on her hair disappear as Harmony yelps. "You're an idiot."

Spinning on her heel, she punches Harmony as hard as she can, no finesse, no training, just her fist and Harmony's face, best friends forever. As Harmony stumbles back, she bends down and snatches up her stake, twirling it across her palm and slamming it into Harm's chest.

Oh.

For the first time maybe ever, she realises too late that she's going to almost regret killing a vampire, everything of the now evaporating as a rush of better memories suddenly floods to mind. This is Harmony. _Harmony_. Her best friend. Her --

"I'm sorry," she manages.

Harmony smiles, blonde and not comprehending to the end, and fades away.

  


* * *

  


Angel's still fighting one of the vampires. She can see him over by the cheruby Wilkins plot, trading throwy punches and random brawling moves, and she's about to heel it back over there when she looks up and --

She was right. She does remember this place.

The Alpert mausoleum has seen way better days, ivy smothering the left half and a section of the right wall crumbling in on itself. The area layout though, the positioning of the surrounding tombstones and gravestones? All totally memory truthsome.

_Buffy, come on -- one night of rest is not gonna kill you._

The words -- Willow's? Xander's? -- echo and ripple as she turns in slow, small circles, trying to see, to remember -- what was it Buffy had said?

Oh. Yeah.

"No," she breathes out, "it'll kill someone else."

"Cordelia?"

She looks up.

He's still in his gamey-vamp face, sword gone and coat all dusty, as he weaves through the markers towards her.

She holds up her hand. "Stop!"

He freezes immediately, shoulders tensing, and she knows he's trying to sense where the attack he thinks she's just warned him about is going to come from, but.

"Wrong," she says, shaking her head. This looks all wrong. When it happened, he -- Turning, she says, "there."

"What?" She listens as he unfreezes, as he walks past her and towards where she's pointing at the section of road curb near a dead street light. Stopping of his own volition this time, he turns in a circle, looking down and around before back up at her, confused. "Wh--"

Her heart leaps and she feels faint, suddenly. Light-headed. Likely to cease consciousness.

"This --" Her voice catches, and she clears her throat, trying again. "This is where you could have stopped it."

His head tilts slightly to the right, mimicking that night so uncannily that she almost can't breathe. "Stopped it?"

"Me," she whispers.

"Huh?"

The stake in her hand is a mistake. She wasn't carrying one that night, _never_ carried one those nights. Back then --

Dropping the stake, she fumbles in her pockets for a cross. The one she pulls out is way smaller than what she'd had that night -- the one she'd told Willow she _had_ to have, thank you very much, because she was Cordelia and that alone determined that she have the bigger and better symbol -- but the allusion works nonetheless.

"We were here, patrolling. Xander and Willow and I." He flinches at those names. "Buffy was all sicky and flu-y, and they had the oh so brilliant idea that they could help in her place and --"

"Your dimension," he says slowly. "You --"

"It wasn't a _dimension_ ," she snaps. "God, Angel -- deficient much? If _only_ it was a stupid dimension! Do you know how easy those are to cross? I'd've been home years ago if that were the case." She points the cross at him. "No. No. We were here, and then Buffy was here too, all, 'oh, Angelus, he's no match for a half-pint slayer as gross as I', and that's when you --"

_Aww, c'mon. Just one more._

"Cordelia --"

"You should have done it! You should have killed me! You _had_ me, get it? One moment all stepping-out-the-shadows guy and the next you and me on the ground, you all grr and me all defenceless and so easily dieable, and all you had to do was bite down and you _didn't_." Her shoulders slump. "You didn't."

"That wasn't me."

Pfft. Like _that_ matters. "Yeah? Well, it _was_ me, okay? It was me before I turned all big bad and _you could have stopped it_."

Stiffly, Angel says, "killed you, you mean." Slowly, he steps towards her. "Bitten you." Another step. "Drained you." And another and another until he's right up in her face, her cross hovering a shirt's breadth from his chest. "Turned you?"

She looks up at him. "You could have saved the world."

"No," he says, quietly, "I couldn't have."

Even now... even after everything he saw at the high school, the truth of her past on high-def orb-TV... "You still don't believe me," she says dully, looking away.

"Hey," he says, touching her chin so that she'll look at him again. "History's full of people who've changed the course of things to come, Cordelia. You're just one of them. No different, no worse."

"Not worse?" She scoffs bitterly. "I've murdered thousands -- _tens_ of thousands -- of people. People who never did anything to me. Who probably never would have. This town alone used to have almost forty-thousand in it and how many are left now? One hundred? Two?"

He shrugs. "How many did Hitler kill? Genghis Khan? The Crusades? The Rwandan military? Your own American government? Who's to say that your reality wouldn't have ended with a higher count than yours some other way?"

He doesn't understand. " _I_ say. What I did -- it wasn't some war or revolution or conquest. It was a wish. Unnatural and magical and --"

"And it's done. It's done and the world still turns, just as it always has, because the people in it? They don't care. They don't know how things came to be this way and they don't care. Nobody's going around thinking, 'oh, I wish Cordelia hadn't done what she did', just like they're not saying, 'wow, wouldn't it have been nice if the She'ju'lal demons hadn't created that plague back in the fifth century'. For them life is just life -- theirs to live as they choose."

"But they're choosing _wrong_!"

"You don't know that."

Leaning down, he kisses her, totally unmindful of the damage she could cause his heart in this very instant.

Pulling back, he lets his bumpies smooth out. "C'mon," he says, gently, "let's go home."

  


* * *

  


At the car, he hands her into the Plymouth all gentlemanly and sweet. Before he can pull back, she reaches out and touches the side of his face.

She has no idea what she wants to say.

"It'll be alright," he says. "I promise."

Dropping her hand, she lets him shut the door.

 _Yeah_. That's what she used to think.

  


* * *

  



	6. The Apartment

They don't talk on the way back to LA. Like, _at all_.

In the drivers seat, Angel sits with one arm propped against his door, fingers light on the steering wheel. He drives faster than the speed limits, guiding the car like it's all reflex and autonomous and there's not a chance in the world he'll ever crash. 

Curled against the passenger door, she watches him and wonders when he got so brave.

He likes this life, she knows. Even with all his broodiness and people-saving-failures and tortured past, he likes it here. Likes his underground batcave and his collection of wicked sharp weapons and the satisfaction that comes from successfully beating on a demon and winning.

Likes her.

Is he right? Is the rest of the world _not_ worse off because of what she did? By creating an apocalypse five years ago, has she somehow averted a nastier one? By sacrificing her hometown, has she given a second chance to another?

What she did... does it -- _should_ it -- even matter?

For a second she tries to think about what her life could be like. Not in her own reality, safe and sane, but here. In _this_ reality. Without her plan.

Could she be happy?

"We're here."

Blinking, she looks out the windscreen and realises he's right. They're in her street, and outside of her building. They're here.

"What would I do?"

"I'm sorry?"

"If I didn't fix things. If I didn't make them right." In the distance, she watches something short and stumpy -- a dog? a hobgoblin? -- dart across the road and disappear into some undergrowth. "With no purpose -- what would I do?" She looks back at him. "What do _you_ do?"

He looks confused. "What do you mean?"

She waves a hand. "This car, your apartment, your weapons and blood and electricity and clothes -- which, okay, they're not Calvin Klein, but they're kind of natty nonetheless. Do you steal them?"

He frowns. "How do you steal electricity?"

How the hell would she know? "You have money, right?" she persists. "To pay for things?"

"... yes."

"And that money comes from...?"

"Oh," he says, his expression clearing. "Oh! Well," he shrugs. "You gave me money."

Five _years_ ago, she did, and definitely not enough to live or die off every day since then. "And?"

"And there was this group of Nahdrahs a couple of years ago. Came across them trying to cut off this girl's head, only she ran off while I was busy, leaving behind this metal case full of money. And then, at the Hyperion --"

"The what now?"

"The Hyperion Hotel? You helped me kill the Thesulac demon feeding off of it? Well, before then, there was money hidden in the basement, and --"

"Oh my god," she says, cutting him off. "You make money from fighting demons! You're totally, like, a demon profiteer! Or a member of a demon fight club... is there a demon fight club? Are you not allowed to talk about demon fight club? Is this a rule thingy?"

"What? No! I just..." he shrugs, "... you know, take -- look, it's not like anyone else _needed_ it."

"Relax, Soul-boy. Your non-philanthropia is of no never mind to me." She actually can even sort of admire his opportunism -- it's not like he can get a regular day job or anything and, hey, if it were possible for her to do the same, she'd probably be all over that demon cash too.

Hell, she'd do a lot of possible things if she could.

"Cordy?"

"Hmm?" Closer now, the dog-goblin is back. She watches it circle a couple of trashcans next door.

"I'm... sorry. That you didn't find what you wanted. In Sunnydale."

Surprised, she turns back to him, taking in the way he's sitting all still and not-looking-at-her, staring straight ahead. "I thought you didn't want me to."

He shrugs. "Doesn't mean I'm not sorry."

One night this man is going to kill her dead with his ability to make her feel simultaneously awful and loved and selfish and worthy of anything so much more.

"Angel." Biting her bottom lip briefly, she meets his eyes and says something she hasn't for five years or more, something she hadn't ever planned on saying ever again. It's a little heady. "Come in."

  


* * *

  


As she unlocks her front door and pushes it open, he says, "you don't have to do this. There are spells -- you can uninvite me."

She knows. "I know," she says.

Taking his hand, she leads him inside.

  


* * *

  


By the time they get to her bedroom door, most of their clothes are gone, a shedded path through her apartment.

She feels like she's drowning a little, her limbs turning heavy and needy, her lungs pulling for more air than she can find. His hands are in her hair, on her breasts, her back, between her thighs. She can feel him everywhere.

Lying back on her bed, she pulls him down after her. His weight settles on top of her, holding her down, holding her close.

Not close enough.

 _More_ , she thinks, echoes, every other time and every wanted time blending and bending and mending...

His cock slides into her slow and sweet.

Soft, soft thrusts, susurrations of movement, as he pushes her down and pulls her up again. Looping her arms around his neck, she kisses him and holds him and wants him and needs him and --

 _Happy_ , she thinks, _right now and right here and right with you, I_.

Her body tightens and tenses.

"Angel," she breathes out, breathes into him.

She's starting to come and the kiss fades as his back arches, his eyes closing, and the look -- the _expression_ \-- on his face as he rises above her...

 _Oh_ , she thinks. _Oh, I do, I do, I do too..._

When she falls, she takes him with her.

  


* * *

  


In the quiet of her bedroom, she mirrors him.

"That night," she says, her cheek shifting on the pillow they're sharing, "in the alley?"

His hand tightens briefly on her hip before smoothing to the small of her back and pulling her one more inch closer, body to body. "Hmm?"

She stares at his mouth. "Did I really say your name?"

"Yes."

She smiles, soft and sleepy, and closes her eyes. "I'm glad," she whispers.

"Mmm." He leans forward and brushes his lips over her forehead. "So am I."

  


* * *

  


Her arm itches.

Rolling over, she reaches for one of her pillows and curls around it, not ready to wake up just yet. _Sleepy_ , she thinks. _I'm sleepy and... alone?_

Opening her eyes, she blinks in surprise at the empty space beside her.

"Cordelia."

Wait -- not alone. Pushing herself up, she looks around briefly before realising he's standing in the corner near the window. "Wha--" Clearing her throat, she tries again. "Hey."

He doesn't say anything.

Yawning, she runs a hand through her hair, pushing it away from her face. "What's with the sudden wallflowering?"

Moving, he steps out of the corner and walks back to the bed, sitting down on the edge.

His uber-quietness is a little weird. "Hey," she repeats softly. "You okay?" When he still keeps with the silence, her sleepy-contentness begins to fade. "Ang--"

Reaching out, he tugs on the sheet covering her, pulling it back from her legs. His hand hovers over her thigh, fingers all but tracing the scar there. "Why do you have this?"

A faint pulse of unease ripples through her. "What do you mean?"

His hand darts to her arm and wraps lightly around her bicep. "Your arm," he says, dragging his palm up her arm and over her shoulder. "Your neck." He spreads his fingers over the skin in question. "Why not your thigh too?"

Oh! _Oh_. Relief trickles over the unease as she realises what he's asking. What she's -- honestly -- kind of surprised that he hasn't asked before now. Shrugging, she reaches out and rests her hand on his thigh, matching his gentleness. "Didn't want to."

 _Couldn't_ , mores the thing. Gru had offered -- had asked her too, actually, a fully clean body slate -- but she hadn't been able to. Willow and Xander's bites... Larry and Oz's burns... those scars had been unnecessary, the memories of how she'd obtained them more than engraved into her psyche. Angel's touch -- his bite -- on the other hand...

Her memory hadn't been enough. Wouldn't have _ever_ been enough.

He growls softly, vamping out.

"Hey," she smiles, "what is this?" She moves her hand from his thigh to his face, brushing her fingertips over the sharp jut of his cheekbone. "Did you have a bad dream or --"

Quicker than she could have thought possible, his free hand snaps up and grabs her fingers. Almost simultaneously, he pushes her down into the pillows, pinning her left arm under her body as he holds her by the throat. The hand he's holding he stretches up to lie on the pillows above her head.

Panic spikes hard. "Angel!" Struggling, she tries shift his sudden weight. "What are you --" He presses harder. She sucks in a quick, frantic breath. "Get off of me!"

He grins, wide and wolfish. "Why?"

 _What the --?_ Twisting, she gets her left arm free from underneath her and tries to pry his hand off her collarbone, slapping wildly at his grip when he doesn't shift. "Get -- _Angel_!"

Before she has time to process, both of her hands are above her head, locked in his grip. Bending down, he licks a straight line up the length of her neck and hovers his mouth above hers.

He raises an eyebrow, all devil. "Who?"

  


* * *

  


_Not possible. Not possible. Not possible._

Fear-frozen, she watches as he moves so he can hold both her hands with one of his. His other hand trails down the side of her body, fingernails scratching, until he reaches her thigh. Hooking his hand around her leg, he tugs her open and presses his palm against her scar.

"Gotta say, baby. Never expected you'd be right."

She stares, wide-eyed.

"Soul certainly didn't. Heard your sweet little lullabies and threw them out with a grain of salt and sand every single time."

_Not possible._

"But now? Now. Well." Grinning still, he stretches and leans down and nips at the curve of her hip, humming. " _I'm a believer_ ," he sing-songs.

_Dream. Nightmare. More cogent than usual, maybe, but still. Dream. Nightmare. It has to be._

Not possible.

Soon. If she doesn't fight, if she just lets it happen, just gets it over and done with, then soon enough he'll be all bitey on her and she'll be able to wake up. She'll wake up and find _Angel_ beside her in bed and he'll touch her and look at her like she's worthy and she'll think, _okay, okay, maybe that was it, maybe that was the last one, the 'the end' nightmare, and_ \--

He lets go of her hands.

She doesn't move.

Frowning, he snaps his fingers in front of her face, his expression clearing when her eyes track to his. "That's better," he says, softly, dangerously. He shifts on top of her, moving down her body until his mouth is brushing her thigh.

"Angelus," she breathes out. _Not possible._

Looking up at her, he smiles, slow and wicked. "Hey, baby," he says.

He bites down hard.

  


* * *

  


Any thoughts of this being a dream or nightmare or non-actuality vanish the instant his fangs tear through her scarred flesh.

As the pain shreds through her shock, she bucks violently and sits up, her hands finding the curve of his shoulder and shoving with more adrenaline than she ever could have imagined to have. His mouth pulls from her thigh messily as she pushes him away, blood spraying across her leg and the bed sheets.

Growling, he backhands her across the face, knocking her back down again.

She hits the wall and headboard skull first, her arms pinwheeling wildly and catching at her bedside table, sweeping the alarm clock and lamp from its surface. _Legs_ , she thinks. She needs to get her legs free of the sheets and his grabby hands. Needs to plant her feet against his body and push him away with all the lying-down-and-gravity-hurdled strength that she'll never get from her own arms right now. Needs to get to a weapon. Needs to --

Too fast, he palms her body roughly and grips her hard around the waist, dragging her back the few inches of freedom her struggling had won. One hand returns to her throat, while his other shoves against the fresh bite on her leg. Pain flares bright and brilliant as his fangs gleam in the moonlight streaming through her curtains.

 _Four years_ , she manages to think, _and how many vampires? How many savate classes? He's just another bloodsucker, damnit, stakeable and --_

"Aww, c'mon," he says, pulling up his hand and licking a stripe of blood off his palm. With a sudden, wrenching move, he grips her shoulder and moves the hand on her throat to her nape, pulling her upright, splaying her against him, yanking her head to the side and baring her neck. "Just one more."

_NO! NO! FIGHT, DAMNIT! FIGHT HIM! FI--_

He lunges for her neck.

  


* * *

  


She's falling.

Her back hits the mattress with a bounce, thigh smarting as her muscles pull on the torn flesh. Uncomprehending, she raises her head and watches as Angelus flies across the room and out through her bedroom door.

The door slams shut before she can see where he lands.

"Well," says a voice from near the foot of the bed. "This is a surprise."

She's going to pass out. Or faint. Or faint, pass out and --

The figure steps into the moonlight.

She screams. " _I WISH BUFFY SUMMERS HAD COME TO SUNNYDALE! I WISH BUFFY SUMMERS HAD COME TO SUNNYDALE! I WISH BUFFY SUMMERS HAD COM_ \--"

With two steps, Anya reaches out and backhands her just as hard as he had.

"Sorry, Cor," she says. "No refunds."

  


* * *

  


Anya turns on the overhead light and leans against her dresser, toying with her amulet.

Watching her from her position still on the bed, she can't stop whispering, "-- Summers had come to Sunnydale. I wish Buffy Summers had come to Sunnydale. I --"

"You know, as much as I appreciate the persistence and all?" says Anya. "Not gonna happen."

She'll stop when it's done, she thinks, tightening her grip on her thigh and pressuring down on the bite. "-- to Sunnydale. I wish Buffy Summers had come to Sunnydale. I wish --"

Quick-like, Anya steps forward and sucker-punches her hard in the chest.

Gasping mid-word, she falls back against her pillows, hands loosening around her thigh as pain radiates all over, chest and head and face and thigh and _everything_. She sucks desperately for oxygen.

"Finally!" Holding out a hand, Anya makes a show of checking her nails. Satisfied, she drops her arm again. "So," she smiles cheerfully. "Hey!"

 _Hey?_ Wheezing, she stares blankly.

"Gotta hand it to you, Cor. Never ever saw this coming." Sitting on the edge of the bed, Anya pokes her fingers into the smears of blood on the sheets. "I mean, repeat customers? Generally not a possibility for me once their wish kills them dead."

"I summoned you," she whispers.

Anya looks up. "Hmm?"

"I summoned you," she repeats, louder, coughing a little. "A hundred times, I --"

"Fifty-three, actually," interrupts Anya. She laughs. "Actually -- kind of a funny story -- the accounting department has taken to using your call as the end-of-month cut off signal for the filing of expenses. It's a little embarrassing, you know? But, still. Flattery."

"You --" She swallows hard. "They worked? You knew --"

Wiping her bloody hand on her pants, Anya rolls her eyes. "Well, _duh_. I mean, it's not like I have a one-eight-hundred number or anything. 'Come before me' isn't exactly a tongue twister."

"But you never --"

Anya looks startled. "What? Answered? Hell no!" Standing up from the bed, she heads for the door. "The satisfaction guarantee is for the wish, not the wishee. You got exactly what you asked for."

 _Oh, as if_! She never wished for _this_.

Opening the door, Anya sticks her head out. Nodding, she pulls back and shuts the door again.

"Is he --" Adjusting her grip on her thigh, she grits her teeth as blood oozes between her fingers. "Is he dead?"

"Well, _yes_." Turning around, Anya gives her a confused look. "He is a vampire, after all." She leans against the door. "But if you mean, 'is he dust to dust', then, no. He's out cold for the moment -- vampires are so damn _fragile_ , you know? -- but he'll be back in here shortly enough."

She's feeling a little lightheaded -- blood loss, most likely. She needs to get to a doctor. To Anya, she repeats, "back in here?"

Anya shrugs. "To finish what you two were doing before I got here, I guess."

Oh. Right.

"I think --" Clearing her throat, she tries again. "Could you -- I think I need an ambulance."

"Probably," agrees Anya, nodding. "Another ten seconds and this would have been Malice's gig, not mine. You're lucky I didn't drink as much as she did at our Christmas party."

 _Malice_ , she thinks, the years of Demonology 101 studying she's put herself through churning forth all kinds of not so trivial trivia. _The Unforgiving One. Born in olden Greece, she became the VD of death bed wishing some time before time was worth talking about._

She looks at Anya. "He was going to kill me." She's surprised by how unsurprised she is at uttering those words.

"Likely still will," says Anya cheerfully. "But -- you know -- kudos! Perfect bliss and true love in our brave new world? I honestly didn't think you had it in you."

Neither did she. After so long -- it just doesn't speak to any sort of intelligence that he could lose his soul now, here, tonight. Not when the original deed was five years and a hotel room ago. "It's a spell," she says. "Or a trick. Maybe a drug."

Anya rolls her eyes. "Uh huh, sure. I'm here because of a _placebo_. Makes perfect sense." She scoffs. "Please!"

Her hands are cramping up; she forces herself to keep them where they are. "Not to be the bearer of the obviously bleeding _obvious_ here, Anya, but he hasn't broken up with me -- he's trying to _break_ me."

"And doing a totally awesome job of it, too," Anya agrees. "That metaphorical crack you felt earlier when Salty Goodness out there shattered your heart into teeny tiny irrevocably broken pieces and created a vacuum of nothing inside you? Five star heartbreak that."

"You're wrong." _So_ wrong. She didn't feel anything of the sort. Not anything at all.

Closing her eyes, she licks her lips. Hot -- she's starting to sweat, and itch, and her hands are _really_ starting to burn now...

Her leg's kinda cool, though. Not ice-like or anything, but definitely less than warm.

Shifting, she reaches for her sheet, tugging it up and around her. It's hard work, her arms and hands all stiff and achy, and the fabric feels a little damp as it tangles around her legs, but that's probably the perspiration talking. With difficulty she brings up her right hand and wipes her brow.

Anya's talking again. Opening her eyes, she tries to focus. "What?"

"Oh, for Plrtz Glrb's sake. You could at least _pretend_ to stay alive, you know! Rude, much?"

"Sorry." With effort, she pushes herself up the bed a little, leaning her head against the headboard. Little stars flare around Anya's head like a halo. "Whoa." _Pretty_...

Muttering something unintelligible under her breath, Anya pushes away from the door and walks across to the bed. Without warning, she slams her fist onto her thigh.

Molten fire explodes through her body. Screaming, she bolts upright, hands latching onto her leg and pressing hard against the hurt. Her heart pounds with sudden adrenaline.

From the other room, a responding roar of noise, of anger and fury. _Angelus_...

"That's better," says Anya, nodding. Clapping her hands together, she bounces on her heels a little. "So -- what's it going to be?"

Gasping, she says, "be?"

Anya looks at her like she's retarded. "Your wish," she says slowly. "You do remember how this works, right? One betrayed heart -- one wish?"

Remember? She's never not once ever _forgotten_! As quickly as she can, she blurts out, " _IwishBuffySummershadcometoSunnydale_!"

Anya deflates visibly.

"Did you hear me?" she says, leaning over her hands, using her body weight to keep the pressure up. "I _said_ , I wish --"

Holding up her hand, Anya nods. "Oh, I heard you. Heard you till my ears bled, I heard you. And now you're going to listen to me -- no. No, no, no, no, _no_. Look --" Stepping forward, Anya leans down. "Let me be as clear as Swarovski crystal here -- Buffy Summers already _came_ to Sunnydale, remember? All non-Prada and vampire bait? That Slayer has sailed."

Something fragile-sounding shatters against her closed bedroom door and is immediately followed by the cracking thud of something oppositely heavy.

"No." She shakes her head, frantic. "No -- I get anything, right? Anything I want. The world turned purple, dinosaurs roaming this fair land -- _anything_."

"Purple dinosaurs?" Anya nods emphatically. "Not a problem. Entertaining and, possibly, educational. You want that? Wish and it's done. But I will not play Buffy Summers bingo with you and ruin perfection." Standing up straight, Anya gestures widely. "Look around! Look at _you_! The love of your life is killing you _dead_ and you're bitching about a girl you once went _Mean Girls_ on. I mean, come _on_ , Cor. We won Best New Reality of the year together! You're no unoriginal Harmony -- give me something good here! Revenge away! Boils and burns and splinters on all the penises in the world. On Angelus' penis --"

Angelus.

Angel.

The Bronze, a thousand years ago, cars and flaky dates, laughter and coffee. The Plaza and a whirlwind of cosmetics, the first time he ever held her like he cared. Studying in the library like it's a Buffy Research Party Redux, and drinking bad coffee night after night just to see him again -- _I've never met anyone like you_ \-- and staking vampires together, side by side -- _you're amazing, you're good for me, I think you're very brave..._

His voice, that second first night, sitting on the bottom step in his apartment -- _I can't not love you_...

Heavy, heavy bangs; her bedroom door shudders in its frame, and a splintery-crack suddenly appears in the center.

Anya's still talking. "-- or whatever you want for him. You name it and I'll give it to you. Just do it now, Cor, because this world? This world isn't going nowhere." Anya smiles. " _You_ are."

 _Yes_ , she thinks, digging her fingernails into the skin around his bite. _Yes, she is_.

_All the Scoobies from Sunnydale die..._

Looking up, she realises Anya's suddenly very far away -- very small -- almost doll-like on the other side of the room. She panics. "No! No, wait! Wait! I'll do it! I will! I wish --"

With a roll of her eyes, Anya's face melts away to reveal Anyanka. " _Done_ ," she hisses.

And the world flares white again.

  


* * *

  



	7. The Office

She screams.

From the other room there's a thud as something heavy hits the floor. A split-second later, he appears in the doorway, vampy and determined.

"What? What's wrong?"

One-hand-on-her-heart startled, she points to the corner of the room with a feather duster. "Cockroach! There!" When he doesn't move, she points more emphatically. "Hello? Bantam weight brain burrower currently on the premises!"

Bones shifting, he loses the face. "Brai--" he starts to repeat, only to shake his head like he's got uber-cause for exasperation. "Cordy."

She's already backtracking to the desk she's just finished de-sheeting and dusting. Pulling open the bottom drawer, she looks for the Yellow Pages she shoved in there. "E -- E -- E -- ah! Here we go! Exterminators..."

"Cordy..."

Not looking up, she snaps her fingers in the general direction of where she last saw her bag. "Grab me my cell, yeah?"

"They're not going to be open."

"Of course they will! LA's, like, infestation incorporated. The day the antlered bug squashers in this city close their doors is the day ants take over the world."

"Actually --"

Rolling her eyes, she flicks through the ads. "If that's the prelude to another of your 'remember when it was 1819 and bathing was still a fond future' stories, pass. Besides --" She brushes a strand of hair back towards her ponytail. "-- we need to arrange for a sign-painter, also."

Tentatively, Angel says, "sign-painter?"

"For the door...? So people will know who we are...?" Maybe that thud earlier was his head losing its marbles. "Seriously, Angel. I mean, really."

"Really," he echoes, only he says it beside her, having crossed the room all supernaturally creepy and fast. He places one hand on top of hers, stilling her page-flickiness. "Stop, okay? It's Christmas Day. They'll be closed."

 _Chris_ \-- oh. Right. Sighing, she leans to the side and rests her head against his shoulder. "Oops?"

His other hand moves to the small of her back, holding her almost dance-embrace-like. "You can call them tomorrow," he promises, and tightens his grip into a hug.

  


* * *

  


Swapping rooms for awhile, she leaves Angel outside to remove the rest of the sheets and rearrange their desks into a layout more appealing than dumped-here chic while she finishes the book shelving in the inner office they're making over into a library.

"You sure about all this?"

"Hmm?" Wiping off a thin layer of dust, she alphabetises her _Bob's Mystical Monsters and Preternatural Pets_ anthology on the shelf. Most of her personal collection is already over here, and one more trip tonight oughta complete the relocation.

"This --" When she looks over to where he's leaning all studied against the doorjamb, he waves at the abundance of bookcases. "I thought you needed these."

"Uh... yeah? That is why we henced them over here, right? So we wouldn't have to keep high heeling it back to my place every time we wanted to be referencing?"

"I meant for your... searching."

His utter reluctance to refer to anything vengeancy would be kinda funny if it wasn't so not. Turning back to the bookcase, she shrugs. "What, I can't not look from here?"

He blinks. " _Not_ look?"

Well, yeah. Slotting in the last handful of books, she tosses him the empty box. "I figure it's like when I couldn't find my cell phone last week -- as soon as I stopped searching for it, there it was."

"You made _me_ look for it! You kicked me out of bed and wouldn't let me back in until I found it!" Having collapsed the box, he props it against the wall.

"And your point is...? Worked, didn't it. I stopped and I found."

"Because _I_ found it!"

He's really not getting it... and that's probably for the best. "Angel." Walking over, she presses her hands to his chest and tilts her head back, looking up at him all sweet and smiley. "Don't knock the system, okay? The system works."

Especially when the whole point of the system, now, is for it _not_ to work.

Leaning down, he presses a swift, smacking kiss to her lips. "The system's crazy."

"Well, _yeah_." Grinning, she gives back his kiss just as quick like, before shoving hard on his chest. "Now get out of my way. We have a company to outfit."

  


* * *

  


There's a box sitting on his kitchen table.

Sucking on a yoghurty spoon, she shuts the microwave door and presses the quick start button. As the mug of blood begins its circling journey to ninety-eight-point-six, she does her own ellipse around the table.

Plain cardboard, no scrawling description written across the top flap -- _definitely_ not one of the ones she's been carting over here.

She probably shouldn't snoop.

Turning her back on it, she watches the counter on the microwave do its thing and does not, absolutely not, stare at the reflection of his kitchen table on the side of his kettle.

Footsteps behind her. As the microwave goes T-minus, Angel slips his hands around her waist and presses up against her back. "Mmm..." he says, nuzzling at the curve of her neck. "Dinner?"

Tilting her head to the side, she licks her spoon. "Depends."

Dragging blunt teeth along the tendons in her shoulder, he hums. "On?"

She leans back against him, feeling a bright, white heat start to lick through her senses. "Whether you're referring to me or not."

Biting down, he pushes his hands under the waistband of her sweatpants and into her underwear. "What do you think?"

Gasping, she drops her yoghurt. "Me," she manages, "definitely me."

As he works her pants down, she strips off her shirt -- well, _his_ shirt, but it's on her, so -- and tank and bra before reaching back and fumbling with his fly. His hands leave her body just long enough to divest himself of his own clothing, and then his cock is sliding against the small of her back as he pulls her back a step. Her hands find the edge of the counter and hold on tight.

One of his hands settles between her legs, his fingers dancing over her clit, while his other rubs the thick ridge of his cock against the slickness of her sex. Moaning, she rolls her hips against his touch.

"Don't tease..."

He huffs what might be a laugh against her upper back, mouth open on her skin. "Patience --"

"Is so not a virtue right now!" Prying one hand off the counter, she reaches down as her hips cant up, pushing his hands away and guiding his cock inside of her. "Fuck!"

He growls, low and deep.

A split-second to breathe, to adjust to the feel of him stretching and filling her up, before his hands return to her waist and grip tight and hard, holding her still as he starts to push against her. Her whole body rocks forward and she straightens the arm attached to the counter to keep herself from face-planting.

Shallow, shallow strokes as he fucks her, as she touches herself, as he sucks on her neck and shoulders, nipping and licking. She can feel her muscles tensing as the pressure to come builds; can feel his fingers tightening on her hips, his unfangy teeth pulling at her flesh, his rhythm fracturing as he climbs after her.

The microwave is silent, and has been for several minutes now, but on instinct she reaches out with the hand not already gripping onto the counter and hits for the door release button, the scent of hot, hot blood wafting out in a heady cloud.

Angel's reaction is immediate and vibrant and wicked-hot. Vamping, he grips her hips hard and slams his cock into her, forcing her up onto her toes as both her hands clench around the counter's formica edge. His mouth latches onto her neck, fangs biting down and down and down...

She comes mid-bite, mid-thrust, mid-hottest orgasm of her _life_ , whimpering and breathless and trembling in his hands and barely even conscious of the fact that he's followed her into a bone-melting release of his own.

Achingly slowly, he eases off, fangs retracting and the sucking less and less until he's just licking at the bite he's left on her neck. His hands flex on her hips, his hold loosening, and she shudders as his cock slides out of her, as her heels settle back on the ground.

"Oh my god," she breathes out, muscles still popping and sparking.

He hums wordlessly.

Leaning forward, she drops her head down onto the backs of her hands. She's still holding onto the counter too tight to let go. "For the record? We are totally -- _totally_ \-- going to be cleaning the office every day of our lives."

He takes a way unnecessary breath. "Hell yes."

  


* * *

  


After she's cleaned up the yoghurt she spilled on the counter, and he's reheated his blood, they sit down at the kitchen table. She's takes the chair right-angled to his and crosses her legs, resting her feet on his lap.

"You okay?" he asks, staring at her neck.

She nods. "You?" He's still getting used to the reality of her not freaking out if he wants to bite her a little during sex, and -- truth be very much told -- she is too. The fact that it's usually fire-red hot when he does it, though, has been going a long way towards lessening the possibilities of panic.

Well, that and the utter absence of her nightmares since Sunnydale, because apparently the cure for terror is to actually _be_ terrorised. And all but die. And then not.

And did she mention the mostly because it's hot? She finds it hard to believe, now, that her nightmares had ever let her forget that little fact.

Sipping at his dinner, he nods back.

"Good." Stretching, she pokes his bare chest with her big toe. "Because that?" She tilts her head towards the counter. "Was totally way more than okay."

He looks down at his mug -- like he's all self-conscious and not at all Mr I've-been-a-vampire-for-two-hundred-and-fifty-years-and-know-more-about-sex-than-you-could-ever-forget -- and then back up at her again, a dirty little smile on his face. He leers way obviously at her half-dressed state.

"Perv," she says, rubbing her foot over his thigh and feeling the fabric of his pants shift under her sole.

He shrugs. "You're sitting there in my shirt," he says, like that explains everything. "In _only_ my shirt."

She makes a half-assed grabby feint towards where the rest of their clothes are still all abandoned on the floor. "I could fix that..."

His hand grabs at her shin, holding her in place. "Don't you dare."

She smirks. "You're easy."

"I'm happy," he corrects, smiling back. "So be kind."

"I thought I _was_ very kind to you." She raises an eyebrow. "Or were you not here just now?"

"Oh, I was here." His hand smoothes up her leg. "Very much here." He strokes a finger along the side of her knee. "Very much _happy_ here." When his fingers tickle up her inner thigh, she squirms and laughs and slaps his hand away. He grins. "Blissfully happy."

"Wow," she says, smiling. " _That_ happy? I'm impressed."

And for the millionth time since -- utterly, completely and irrevocably _relieved_.

 _It worked_.

Cementing her thoughts in the here and now, she leans back in her chair. "We should make up some flyers tomorrow. And order business cards. You know, to go with the signage we'll have on the front door?" She wipes her hand across the air, banner-style. "'CA Investigations'."

"I thought we decided on 'AC Investigations'."

"Pfft. And have people thinking we're half of a heavy metal fan club? I think not. Besides -- 'CA Investigations' sounds way more solvent."

"'AC Investigations' would come first in the Yellow Pages."

She rolls her eyes. "And since our only competition under the category of _Paranormal Consultants and Demon Fighters_ is the 'The Ghostbusters' -- and they're _fictional_ \-- I don't think that's much of a muchness, do you?"

"You just want your name to come first."

Duh! "Like you don't? Please!"

Adorably enough, he looks like he's a non-heartbeat away from poking out his tongue. "It's my office."

"So? It's my demonology library _outfitting_ the office. _And_ it was my idea." Well, _mostly_. But the fact that she got the idea from his descriptions of how he was making money? Totally irrelevant.

"Yeah. Well." He leans forward and smiles that beautiful, breathstealing smile of his. "I love you more."

"Probably," she teases, waving a hand like that totally doesn't count. "But we're talking selling points here, and that won't bank you much outside of this room."

He raises an eyebrow. "And inside the room?"

Dropping her hands to her shirt, she toys with one of the buttons suggestively. "How do you feel about dessert?"

  


* * *

  


The box on the kitchen table contains a pair of worn and torn pants, a cheap and nasty cotton-blend t-shirt, a dirty old blanket, and a shiny foil-wrapped and red-ribboned Christmas present.

After a moment, she realises she recognises all four items.

These are the pants Angel had been wearing when she found him in the Bronze that day, the blanket he used to protect himself when he left the nightclub, the t-shirt she bought him from a supermarket in Oxnard... and the farewell gift she left for him the day _she_ left.

It looks like it's never been opened.

"I couldn't," he says, startling her, and she looks up to see him standing near the end of his sofa, his office and apartment lock-up routine obviously done and dusted. He shrugs. "Didn't want to accept the fact that you were gone."

She drops the present back into the box. "It was a stupid little thing anyway."

She remembers her thinking back then, five years ago today, how love shouldn't -- _couldn't_ \-- survive what they'd been through, and knows now that she was unbelievably wrong.

She recloses the flaps on the box. "I'm sorry I snooped."

He shrugs again. "If I hadn't expected you to look, I wouldn't have left it there."

Moving forward, he picks up the box and walks over to where his trashcan sits in the corner of the kitchen. He dumps the box beside it.

"You don't want it anymore?" she asks curiously.

He straightens and turns back around to face her. "Don't need it anymore," he corrects. As she watches, he moves over to the sink and turns on the taps.

Her heart skips at his honesty, at his faith. He believes in her _so much_ sometimes... it's a little scary.

"Angel --" Fingers gripping the back of a kitchen chair, she stares at his back. "That night the other week? When we got back from Sunnydale?"

He reaches for the liquid detergent. "Hmm?"

"There's something I haven't told you. About that night. About what happened that night."

"Happened?" he repeats, but it's distracted, his tone, and she watches as he starts washing her coffee mug and his dinner mug and her spoons.

"Yeah, I --"

But her words stutter and fail as the enormity of what happened overwhelms her for the infinityth time since -- Anya done and disappearing and reality transforming, reforming, one last time, a brave new world just for her -- Angel asleep in the bed beside her and no more blood, no more heartbreak, no more dying...

No more Angelus.

Ever.

_I wish the Kalderash Romani had made Angelus' soul permanent._

"Cordy?"

Shaking her head, she steps forward and picks up a dish cloth, reaching for one of the mugs sitting on the drainer. "S'not important," she hesitates, drying the mug. "Just, you know, I realised something is all."

He glances at her curiously. "Oh?"

"Yeah." She puts the mug away.

"And that was...?"

That changing reality for the betterment of everyone was never, ever going to happen -- someone, somewhere, was always going to lose.

That the only world she was ever going to be able to affect again was her own.

And that the only home she wanted and needed... was one with him in it.

But -- she can't tell him that. Not in so many words, she can't. She can't tell him what actually happened and run the risk that this time, this time, he _would_ believe her. If he knew that those realisations were solidified by his bringing of her nightmare to life... by his almost killing her...

No.

"I love you," she says simply and moves back to his side. She rests her cheek against his shoulder and smiles up at him.

Smiling back, he hands her the other mug. "I know."

  


* * *

The End

**Author's Note:**

> ORIGINAL URL: <http://anr.livejournal.com/472814.html>
> 
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